Crawley Town chief praises 'fantastic' response to season tickets

Technical director Konyar gave an update to Reds fans on the club's youtube channel. He also outlined plans for the future of the football club.

Konyar claimed that there has been a ‘vast number of new season ticket holders’.

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He added: “We’re fairly confident in anticipating that there will be a limited number of fans (allowed at games), and we hope that if any games do get missed, or they are played behind closed doors we can compensate with a stream”.

When asked about the Reds’ short-term ambitions for next season, Konyar targeted a top-half finish: “We have to try our best to progress, and I may not be popular saying this but I would take the top twelve right now. It’s going to be a harder season, we’re going to have a smaller budget, that’s just the way it works because every team is facing financial difficulties”.

“We have to do our best to keep competing, but I’m firmly confident we can progress – I believe in every one of these lads.”

When asked about the previously mentioned 8-10 year plan to get Crawley into the Championship Konyar admits the club may have been over ambitious: “We’ve underestimated the challenge of Crawley Town when we finished 13th in League Two and that’s the second highest finish in League Two the club has had in its history you understand how young a club it is in the EFL.”

Konyar also spoke about the football team’s relation with its town, and the efforts made to interact with the community with Crawley Ballerz, fitness boot camps and plans for a Crawley fans power league.

Konyar: “Why are we doing these things? Yes, to generate revenue but more importantly to integrate into the community.

“This club needs to make more of a conscious effort for the attendance to go up, because Crawley as a football club is debatably the smallest EFL club, or the second smallest for sure in fans. So we have to work on that, we can’t just say ‘yeah that’s the way it is’ so that’s a conscious effort to try and increase our fan base.

“We need the local people of Crawley to get behind this local team, because that is the most important thing and that is what we are trying to build here.”

Crawley Town recently announced the signing of Zaid Al-Husseini, who joins Sam Ashford and Sam Matthews as the Reds’ third summer recruit for next season.

Konyar said: "He looks like a very exciting player, highly skilful, with hard work dedication and belief, I think we’ve got very exciting talent on our hands. I wish him the best of luck, and to be honest there will be around five players under 21 in our squad next season because we are trying to build a youth policy.”

Konyar also finally revealed that Crawley have three more players ‘lined up’, one from the Premier League, Championship and League One, all to be announced soon.

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