Crawley Town manager Mark Yates gives his reaction to Morecambe defeat

He cut a frustrated figure after his side recovered from 2-0 down to 2-1 through Rhys Murphy’s second goal in two games.

However Reds’ Mitch Hancox conceded a 90th minute penalty which brought their winning spell to an end.

Yates moaned: “Back to conceding soft goals. It’s going to be a long, frustrating ride home tonight.

“It was a scrappy game first half - they didn’t hurt us. They had a couple of shots.

“We had people pulling out of headers. We’ve had a cross come in and have not dealt with it. Darryl was a bit unlucky, it’s just caught the bar as it came down. Stupid.

“The second one was a good finish from the lad but he shouldn’t have been allowed to do what he had done.

“We got back into the game, we just needed to take one of our chances we were creating.

“We changed our system a bit and the lads knocked it around a bit quite well and scored.

“And in the last minute we decided to play our way out and put Mitch in trouble. It was a penalty, I have no qualms about that. It’s frustrating.

“I thought Shamir (Fenelon) came on and made a real difference. I was very close to playing him tonight, perhaps I should have done. I’ve got to be brave sometimes. When you’ve got Matt in your side you tend to use him a bit, too much possibly.

“Matt (Harrold) didn’t have such an effective game as he has in the last-four. One or two didn’t.

“They haven’t dominated us, they haven’t created lots of chances and we find ourselves going home having been beat 3-1.

“It’s going to be not only a long way home tonight, it’s going to be a long frustrating season if we keep gifting goals like we did tonight.”

Yates praised the 33 hardy supporters who made it for the 574-mile round-trip up to the North West on a midweek night.

“Fantastic. The fans were brilliant. I went down the tunnel and I thought about those supporters and did come back out. I appreciate the efforts made by them tonight because we know how far they’ve come. Well done to them and sorry we haven’t been able to get a result for them!”

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