Crawley Town have sacked head coach Colin Kazim-Richards following a disastrous start to the League Two season. The club also dismissed assistant manager Julian Gray and director of football Erdem Konyar in a major backroom overhaul.

A club statement on Wednesday confirmed the departures, thanking Kazim-Richards and Gray for securing the club's EFL status last season. It added that all three leave with the club's best wishes for their future endeavours. The decision comes after a 3-2 home defeat to Shrewsbury Town on Tuesday night, a result that left Crawley rooted to the bottom of the table, sitting 24th in League Two on just 6 points from 11 games, with a record of one win, three draws and seven defeats.

Historic low point

The club's current position is the worst start to an EFL season in their history. They have taken just six points from their opening 11 matches, suffering seven defeats and scoring only 12 goals while conceding 21. They are 19 points behind leaders Salford City and five points from safety. Kazim-Richards, a former Premier League striker who earned 37 caps for Turkey, was appointed in March 2026. He initially helped the team avoid relegation, collecting nine points from his first seven games in charge.

This season, however, has been defined by struggle. The team conceded 20 goals in their first 10 league matches and handed out nine league debuts following a summer of significant squad turnover, with 16 arrivals and 16 departures. The team's goal minutes reveal a pattern of late vulnerability, with 8 of the 21 goals conceded coming in the final 15 minutes of matches. Their recent form of one win, two draws and two losses in the last five games, including the 1-1 draw with Tranmere on 24 October and a 2-3 loss to Shrewsbury on 20 October, has cemented their lowly status. In a recent interview, Kazim-Richards acknowledged the challenges. "I think we need a little bit more experience, a little bit in terms of game management and things like that," he said. When asked if he could turn things around, he responded, "I feel I can.

What comes next

The search for a new manager begins immediately, with the team's next fixture an away trip to 20th-placed Oldham on Saturday, 31 October. The new appointment will inherit a squad that showed a flicker of resilience in a 1-1 draw with Tranmere on 24 October, where Dylan Morgan scored. The immediate task is clear: stop the slide, tighten a leaky defence, and find a way to climb out of 24th place. The team's top scorer, Dylan Morgan, who also netted in the 2-3 defeat to Shrewsbury, will be a key figure in that fight.

The original report is at IBTimes Singapore