Crawley Town captain Connolly: '˜The early goal killed us'

Reds defender Mark Connolly was critical of a '˜not good enough' performance in their 2-0 home defeat to Colchester.
Football - League 2
Crawley Town v Cambridge Utd
Pictured in action  is Crawley Town's Mark Connolly  and Cambridge's Uche Ikpeazu.

Picture: Liz Pearce 19/08/2017

LP171002 SUS-170819-205453008Football - League 2
Crawley Town v Cambridge Utd
Pictured in action  is Crawley Town's Mark Connolly  and Cambridge's Uche Ikpeazu.

Picture: Liz Pearce 19/08/2017

LP171002 SUS-170819-205453008
Football - League 2 Crawley Town v Cambridge Utd Pictured in action is Crawley Town's Mark Connolly and Cambridge's Uche Ikpeazu. Picture: Liz Pearce 19/08/2017 LP171002 SUS-170819-205453008

Following an excellent 3-2 win at promotion hopefuls Accrington Stanley, Reds fans would have been confident ahead of playing The U’s, but they fell behind after a mistake from Cedric Evina just four minutes into the game.

Connolly, who was named captain in the absence of suspended Jimmy Smith, believes the ‘sloppy’ early goal ‘killed’ the hosts.

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He said: “It was not good enough. We conceded a sloppy goal four minutes into the game and we didn’t move the ball quick enough.

“The early goal killed us and we just couldn’t seem to get the goal to get us back into the game.

“Once they got the goal, they could just sit back and play on the counter-attack which is difficult to play against. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t our day.”

Connolly also believes that the stark lack of consistency this season is down to a problem in the players’ mentality rather than line-up changes.

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He added: “It’s difficult, it’s a mentality thing to get the consistency in a lot of games.

“We need to use the whole squad because there are a lot of games but the performance today just wasn’t good enough.

“We had some fresh legs in there but we didn’t win enough second balls.

“It’s football, you’ve got to make changes to the team every week so that’s just an excuse. I just don’t think we were good enough.

“The players on the pitch need to do better.”

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