Boss Richie Barker blamed poor decision making as Crawley were held to a 1-1 draw at Colchester United.
Emile Sinclair scored his first goal for Reds to cancel out Freddie Sears's opener but otherwise the visitors struggled to create chances.
Andy Drury hit the post while Billy Clarke had a goal ruled out for offside but Barker admitted a draw was a fair result.
Barker said: "At times our decision making let us down. The majority of the time we made the wrong decisions when we were in good areas.
"Some of the players playing at the next level aren't as good as our players but they make better decisions more often. Some of the football we played was excellent but we didn't work the goalkeeper enough.
"A draw was probably just about a fair result but I thought we may have just about edged it. If we had managed an extra 5% then we would probably have nicked the three points."
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