Boss John Gregory admitted Crawley were outfought in the first half as they slumped to a 1-0 defeat at Oldham Athletic.

Danny Philliskirk scored the only goal of the game after 18 minutes but Oldham could easily have added to their lead before the interval.

Reds improved in the second half but the closest they came to an equaliser was a volley from Billy Clarke which was saved by Paul Rachubka.

Gregory was unable to put his finger on the reason for his team's performance having produced one of their best displays of the season to beat Wolves in midweek. 

Gregory said: "It was a poor first half performance by our standards or by anyone's standards for that matter.

"We were probably fortunate to get in only 1-0 down. At that point we were still in the game but we couldn't find an equaliser in the second half despite having an enormous amount of possession.

"We have done incredibly well recently so I have to put this one in perspective. I'm extremely disappointed with the performance but it hasn't happened very often and I sincerely hope it doesn't happen again.

"If you come away from a game and you have been totally outplayed you can say 'okay' but we were just outfought in the first 45 minutes which was disappointing."