Exeter manager Gary Caldwell said he “picked the wrong team” to face Crawley but praised his players for a stunning fightback in their 4-4 draw.
Panutche Camara fired the visitors in front, and after Exeter equalised through Millenic Alli, three goals in eight minutes from Will Swann, Tola Showunmi and Armando Quitrina had the Red Devils 4-1 up at half-time.
But Exeter laid siege to the Crawley goal after the break and they managed to snatch a point with goals from Vincent Harper, Ryan Woods and Demetri Mitchell.
“The first half wasn’t good enough,” Caldwell said. “I picked the wrong team, but players have to take responsibility for their running and their performance and we gave ourselves a mountain to climb at half-time.
“But fair play to the players, they climbed that mountain and we could have won the game.
“It’s a busy period of games but I picked the wrong team based on the performance with too many changes and our connections and links within the team weren’t right.
“We conceded goals we won’t concede often, but our performance led to those goals.
“We were calm at half-time and changed the shape to a 4-4-2 and I said to the players it was down to them. We were relentless in that second half, we created so many chances.
“I said to the players at half-time that the next goal was important because it creates momentum.
“We knew Crawley would be vulnerable and they wouldn’t know whether to attack or sit off and the way we attacked it was relentless, a real siege on their goal, and we could have scored more.”
Crawley head coach Rob Elliot said: “I wouldn’t say it feels like a defeat because we got a point, but it feels very disappointing given the position we got ourselves in and the way we went about the first half.
“We just have to learn to get better when teams step on and throw caution to the wind by putting three, four or five up front.
“We have to deal with that better and I felt we kind of collapsed on ourselves and we weren’t brave with our shape and our press and I was trying to get the lads to stay high and be aggressive in the press.
“In the end, we just had to get through the game and we weren’t able to.
“The positives to the game are the way we approached it and the goals we scored were excellent.
“We are down to the bare bones again with players playing out of position, but when you are 4-1 up you expect to come away with the points, even against a very good team and at a tough place to come.
“It’s frustrating because we are showing large parts of how good we can be, but it is the small detail and step up in level that is letting us down.”
