Crawley Town player Josh Payne admits: '˜Our play lacked purpose'

The former West Ham player reckoned Reds were poor in both attack and defence and their play was lacking in purpose.

The Reds central midfielder was used as a makeshift defender when he came off the bench at the start of the second half to replace the injured Mark Connolly.

Payne said: “Everyone who played a part is very disappointed individually and collectively.

“There’s no purpose to our play at times, we’re not creating enough chances, we’re not holding the ball up top and I feel we are easy to defend against and we need to work on that.

“We moved the ball, whether we have an end product is another question, and if we do, is the quality there? Questionable.

“And that’s from everyone, not just from our wingers or our strikers, it comes from the back.

“We’ve got to stick together because we’re in it together and we all want to go in the right direction and it doesn’t come tougher than Saturday (at home against leaders Luton Town).”

Despite being the home side, Payne did not feel they produced enough of a threat on the Chesterfield goal.

He said: “We’re at home, we’ve got to take the game to the opposition. I feel we really didn’t at anytime tonight, which is very disappointing.

“When you go a goal behind on a set-play, a sloppy goal, we have given ourselves a mountain to climb and that’s been the situation in a few games this season.”

Payne complimented Chesterfield’s second goal by Jordan Flores but underlined the Reds performance was unacceptable.

“We are chasing the game, we’re trying to get a goal - it’s a great strike from the lad, but it’s not good enough from us, nowhere near good enough!”