Crawley boss Rob Elliot has revealed why he stopped protecting his players.
Elliot has been keen to keep the heat off his side as they head towards likely relegation from League One amid unrest off the pitch.
But that changed after the 5-1 defeat at Huddersfield on Saturday.
His side were 3-0 down after 16 minutes and it was 4-0 inside half an hour as they slipped 12 points away from safety.
Elliot said: “The start was horrendous. It’s not good enough, not acceptable.
“We obviously didn’t know what Huddersfield would do considering they’ve changed their manager and everything, and they’ve changed their shape.
“But that doesn’t change our concepts, and we just weren’t able to deal with the game for the first 20-30 minutes and end up going 4-0 down to four really poor goals.
“That’s probably been the issue with us. Ultimately, we concede too many goals. We had some brilliant bits of play, but the goals were really poor from us and we can’t give teams goals at this level.
“It’s just completely not acceptable the first 20 minutes and it doesn’t really matter what happens in the rest of the game, cause the game’s gone by then.
“I’ve taken a lot of stick for it, but I always try and protect the players even if it’s not always my complete thoughts – but it just wasn’t good enough and it hasn’t been at times.
“It’s why we are where we are, and I’ve got to take a huge amount of the blame as well.”
Reds return to action when they host Inigo Calderpn’s Brosol rovers a week on Saturday.
Tuesday (7.45pm)
Isthmian League, south-east: Beckenham v Burgess Hill, Erith v Eastbourne Town, Littlehampton v Croydon Athletic, Merstham v East Grinstead.
Southern Combination, premier: Little Common v AFC Varndeanians (7.30pm), Loxwood v Saltdean.
