Harry Kewell reveals: '˜I felt comfortable we would win'

The Reds boss reckoned his team responded well to fight back from going a goal behind and then dealt well with the threat posed by the home side.

He praised his goalkeeper for keeping the Valiants at bay with excellent saves.

Speaking to www.crawleytownfc.com Kewell said: “Their crosses into the box that Port Vale produced and Tom Pope’s movement was excellent.

“He created a couple of chances but thanks to Glenn Morris with exceptional saves, they were putting us under pressure and got their goal, but I still felt comfortable.

“I felt we lacked that bit in the final third; obviously some decisions go for you and some go against you.”

Kewell supported the referee’s (Mike Jones) decision to penalise Nathan Smith for holding Jimmy Smith in the penalty area.

He said: “We got back into the game though an incident; I just don’t know why players are adamant to hold people in the box.

“You are not supposed to do it, so why are they doing it? I don’t understand.

“We played the right way, looking to start our attacking phases from the back and work the ball forward and we knew what they were going to bring.

“We had to change formation, we did that and I felt we were comfortable, I didn’t think they were getting anything, I just thought that maybe the ref would give them something, but thankfully he didn’t.”

Kewell was happy with the way his defence saw the game out in the last few minutes without conceding another goal.

He said: “I didn’t feel threatened, they had four or five headers at the end, I felt powerful, I felt strong; we won a lot of headers and Thomas (Verheydt) came in to help it out.”

Kewell revealed: “I just feel we should kill games off though. We had opportunities to kill them off and we allowed them (to remain in the match).”