Gregory’s backing bad boy Connolly
CRAWLEY ended a difficult week – and a six-game losing streak – with victory at MK Dons and manager John Gregory confirming the club are fully behind defender Paul Connolly.
Connolly has chosen to contest his FA charge following his clash with a Brentford fan on Tuesday night although his match ended after just ten minutes with a groin injury.
The Red Devils made the most of their hosts’ desperate home form to move themselves six points clear of the drop zone courtesy of hoals from Andy Drury and Michael James with Gregory happy to clarify his stance over Connolly.
Gregory said: “We’ll support Paul 100 per cent.
“I think he’s been in touch with the PFA and we’ll stand by Paul no matter what happens, although we don’t know when the FA will hear his appeal.
“We had one chance early on with Andy Drury and he scored whereas we’ve been in those situations many times over the previous six matches and not taken the chance.
“Andy had a long time to think about that chance and Andy’s just kept composed and put it in the net. Then when we went 2-0 up there really was only one team that was going to win it.”
Crawley made the perfect start as an excellent pass by Jamie Proctor found the unmarked Drury to put him through one-on-one and the mid- fielder kept his composure to score.
After Izale McLeod wastefully lobbed over for MK Dons after being picked out by Alan Smith, the Red Devils’ goalkeeper Paul Jones was called into action when he beat away Dele Alli’s shot.
Mark Randall then steered an effort wide from Dean Lewington’s cross but more bad defending was the gift the visitors a second just before half-time.
Jordan Spence missed Mark Connolly’s clearance leaving Proctor through on goal and he delayed before giving Mike Jones an open goal to finish into.
Paul Jones had to make a brave save at Randall’s feet early in the second half as the Dons tried to find that elusive home goal, but it is now over 500 minutes since they found the net at stadiummk.
Their boss Karl Robinson summed it up in one word. “Embarrassing,” he said.“We’ve let the fans down, we’ve let ourselves down and I thought it answered some questions. I half-knew why some of those haven’t played for some parts of the season.
“Some of them have been asking why I’ve not been playing them and when they’ve looked back and watched that game they’ll see why.”