John Yems praises Crawley for riding their luck in victory at Northampton

Posted Sunday, January 09, 2022 by PA

Crawley manager John Yems admitted his side had to ride their luck en route to Saturday’s hard-fought 1-0 League Two victory over high-flying Northampton.

Crawley became the first away team to win at Sixfields since October thanks to a fine finish from Tom Nichols shortly before half-time.

Northampton dominated the second half but missed a string of chances, with new signing Chanka Zimba going closest when hitting the crossbar.

Yems said: “It’s been difficult with Covid and all that but the lads put themselves on the line and they give 100 per cent every week and that’s what you get on the back of it.

“It wasn’t the prettiest at times but you pick the paper up tomorrow and we’ve won the game 1-0.

“I thought it was a great goal by Tom and you only need one chance like that. We defended and we fought hard and that’s what you’ve got to do.

“Northampton are a good side and credit to them. Honestly, how they haven’t scored today I don’t know, if I’m totally honest.

“But it’s a hard place to go and I think we deserved to come away with something and at times you need a little bit of luck.

“It’s a good result and we have a few more players still to come back so everything feels good at the moment – the lads are enjoying it and there’s nothing better than being in a winning changing room.”

Northampton were on a four-game winning run before coronavirus hit but they have suffered back-to-back defeats since returning, dropping them to third in the table.

“It didn’t quite happen for us today,” said manager Jon Brady. “From 60 minutes onwards, we dominated and had 14 chances.

“We hit the bar and we had a one-on-one and on another day, those chances go in. But I felt we lashed at a lot of our chances and we didn’t have that composure.

“It’s a bit of a smash and grab from them in my opinion because they had one chance all game.

“We had 61 per cent possession and 21 chances but in the first half we weren’t purposeful enough and it still felt like a bit of a hangover from Saturday.

“We did our best in training in the week and we made the changes at half-time and I thought they made a big difference in the second half.

“But our decision-making and our purposefulness wasn’t good enough in the first half and we didn’t take responsibility.

“We had a few choice words at half-time and I demanded more and I thought we looked a lot better. We had enough chances to win the game but it just wouldn’t go in for us.”