Crawley Town v Oldham Athletic: Reds look to enjoy home comforts against Latics

Lewis Young netted for Crawley Town in their 2-1 league defeat at Oldham Athletic in December. Picture by PW Sporting Photography

Crawley will face an Oldham side who picked up a 5-0 victory last weekend over Newport County in what was their best display of the season.

As for Crawley, last time out they picked up an impressive point away to Exeter City.

The Reds would have been frustrated to not walk away with all three points after leading for so long through Ashley Nadesan’s first-half goal.

Exeter’s pressure got them the goal they probably deserved and the points were shared.

Coming into this week’s game Crawley will have the backing of the home crowd and look to stretch their unbeaten run to four games.

Crawley have started 2020 brightly, with just two defeats in this calendar year.

Both of these defeats came on the road and both times teams scored late on in order to beat Crawley.

Walsall’s 88th minute winner and Crewe’s 90th minute clincher both condemned Crawley to 2-1 defeats. They are the only teams to beat Yems’ Crawley in 2020.

Crawley know they’re strong at home and will be looking for all three points against Oldham and nothing less.

The Reds will be looking to finish this season as high as possible.

Their play-off chances are extremely slim and it’s almost mathematically impossible for the Reds to go down.

However one bad result could have a drastic effect on Crawley’s league position.

A defeat could see them slip all the way down to 16th but a win could see them rise up to tenth. A top-half place would be a decent finish for Yems, considering where his side were when he took over.

But Crawley would have liked to have been a bit more competitive and at least threaten to make the play-off places.

Crawley’s opponents Oldham have just come off the back of their best result of the season but off the pitch it is a completely different story.

Players not being paid on time and administration is what Oldham fans are having to put up with as another case of questionable ownership is opening up in the EFL.

We can only hope that Oldham don’t end up in the position Bury did, which resulted in the Shakers’ exclusion from the EFL.

These off-field issues didn’t faze the Oldham players last week as they picked up their first win in five games.

Goals from Danny Rowe, Zak Dearnley, Tom Hamer and Jonny Smith capped a five-star performance.

They’ll look to replicate that performance at Crawley this Saturday but come into the game with extremely poor away form.

The Latics haven’t won on the road since Boxing Day and have won only three away games all season.

If the game were on paper it would give Crawley a big advantage going into the fixture but, as Yems keeps saying, every game is tough and Crawley will have to put in another good performance to take all three points.