Crawley Town boss Kevin Betsy admitted his side didn’t do enough against Carlisle United and their “really good crowd”.
The visiting boss also said a deep United defensive approach made things difficult for his team.
Crawley lost 1-0 to an early Kristian Dennis goal to send them on the long trip home to Sussex empty-handed.
It was a first competitive game in charge for former Arsenal and England youth coach Betsy, who was appointed in the summer by their new cryptocurrency-group owners WAGMI United.
“It’s the first game of the season, everyone’s excited, but I felt we didn’t start as well as we could have,” he told Crawley’s official channels.
READ MORE: Carlisle United's Paul Simpson salutes matchwinner Kristian Dennis and win over Crawley Town
“We did start to control the first two or three minutes but then there was a ricochet in the box, and the ball fell nicely for their player [Dennis] and it puts you on the back foot.
“It’s a tough place to come, there was a really good crowd, and if you don’t start well it can become a bit frantic.
“I think from 20 minutes on we started to control the game and make some really good chances and inroads into the opponents’ half.
“In the second half we tweaked a couple of things and the application out of possession was much better, and we had a lot of ascendancy in the early stages of the second half.
“Their guy did an amazing block to stop us scoring, but for us there wasn’t enough clean-cut chances, and also at times our ball possession wasn’t the level it could have been.
“With the level we know the players are capable of, it wasn’t the level in certain aspects today.
“We have to be better in possession, the boys know that and we will be better next time.”
Betsy acknowledged some of United’s strengths but still felt Crawley could have punished the hosts.
“Paul Simpson’s a really good manager, sets up his team well, defensively they were fairly solid but we got in quite a few times,” he said.
“They defend quite low so there’s not a lot of spaces in behind, but at times we opened them up.
“The chance Dom Telford before half-time had was from exceptional play from us and we needed more of that creativity and quality.”
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