Scott Lindsey believes Crawley were still smarting from their midweek loss to Peterborough as they lost 3-1 at Stevenage.
The Reds had gone down 4-3 on Tuesday, conceding the winner in the seventh minute of stoppage time.
At the Lamex, it was an 89th-minute strike by Jamie Reid and a goal two minutes past the 90 from Dan Kemp that consigned them to defeat.
Reds boss Lindsey said: “We probably left a lot of belief and effort and intensity out on the pitch on Tuesday. We didn’t bring it with us today.
“We were a bit slow with our play, certainly in the first half, and didn’t play with the same intensity that we have in our last three games.
“It looked like we have a bit of scar tissue from losing the game on Tuesday. We didn’t deserve to lose that but we had to move onto the next one, this one, and we played within ourselves a little bit.
“Our passing stats are higher than theirs, so we did OK but we didn’t really do enough to win the game. Did we deserve to lose it? Probably, on reflection.
“In the last three games, we have looked like a top-half team. Here we looked like a bottom-half one.”
It seemed as if Bradley Ibrahim’s equaliser with 20 minutes to go would earn the Reds something for their efforts, cancelling out Harvey White’s wonderful free-kick, but it was not to be.
