Benjamin Allen

Goalkeeper - Crawley Town
8 Oct 2028
Sunday
Process

Marked for Benjamin Allen

57 Edition

The Crawley Town Courier

30 Aug 2027
From our football correspondent Uneasy

Match

No end in sight to Crawley Town's wait for a win

50 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Crawley Town has to find a result from somewhere.

Match

Crawley Town cannot find the net

38 games without scoring. Strikers stop looking up, midfielders take the extra touch, and every shot that clears the bar is followed by a groan that has been building since the last goal.

Squad

Matthijs van Nispen: that is not what I was promised

“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Crawley Town have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.

Market

Guilherme Santos is on his way

The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Crawley Town is pretending he will be back in the shirt.

Boardroom

Guilherme Santos signs for Accrington Stanley while still at Crawley Town

The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Guilherme Santos has agreed terms with Accrington Stanley for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.

Squad

Stanimir Prazov is a better footballer than he was

Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.

Squad

Tempers go at Crawley Town

Seb Revan was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.

Squad

Lee O'Connor falls out with a teammate over standards

The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.

Player ratings

Keanan Bennetts runs at them all day

Successful dribbles: 17. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.

In brief