RESURGENT CRAWLEY IN PLAY-OFF RACE
IT’S easy to understand why Crawley Town were tipped as one of the favourites for relegation from League Two before the season got underway. They were, after all, the next closest team to the trapdoor that saw Hartlepool and Rochdale tumble out of the EFL last term.
In addition, the club’s ambitious new owners, Wagmi United LLC, a group of US cryptocurrency investors, had hardly inspired confidence in that first full season in charge as they gave stints in the managerial hotseat to Kevin Betsy, Matthew Etherington and Scott Lindsey.
To be fair, the latter, recruited from Swindon, did the business in keeping the club in the Football League. He then undertook a massive squad revamp last summer, though there were concerns as to whether the new recruits, some from Non-League, would be up to the task.
If it looked a bit iffy on the surface, then it hasn’t looked that way on the pitch. The Red Devils are nowhere near the relegation scrap and headed into the weekend just two points off the play-off places, albeit in 14th place in a congested table.
Under the tutelage of Lindsey and his coaching staff, Crawley have also played a passing style of football that has been easy on the eye. Up front, they’ve had a striker in Danilo Orsi in a rich vein of form. He netted his 15th league goal of the campaign – 17th in all competitions – to earn a precious 1-0 win at AFC Wimbledon in midweek.
Signed from Grims-by last summer, the 27-year-old insists he never felt his new side would struggle to maintain their status.
“I don’t think it crossed anyone’s mind that we were going to be in any sort of dogfight this year,” he told The FLP after the midweek victory. “We saw on a daily basis what we were doing in training and we saw how hard the gaffer and the rest of the coaching team worked.
Smart
“There were probably a few eyebrows raised, especially with so many boys coming in from Non-League, but they have taken to it fantastically. Everyone has stepped up and the way we play suits the players we have got in the building.”
Orsi is the kind of player who sums up the smart recruitment that Crawley did last summer. Having hit 19 goals in the National League with Maidenhead in 2020-21, he didn’t set the world alight at Harrogate and then Grimsby upon getting his EFL shot. But, as he points out, it’s not easy to hit the goal trail on a regular basis if most of your appearances are coming from the bench.
“If you looked at my stats before coming here, I was almost a one in two, one in three striker at the oth
