Crawley Town manager Scott Lindsey says the club will appoint a replacement for outgoing sporting director Tobias Phoenix and has stressed that the exact job title is secondary to ensuring recruitment is properly led.
Phoenix departed on Monday after a difficult start to the season which has left Crawley in 21st place in League Two.
Lindsey said the short-term impact on his own workload will be limited while chairman and owner Raf Khalili leads the process to recruit Phoenix’s successor. He also underlined that the role’s core purpose will be player identification aligned to Crawley’s style of play.
“I don’t think short term it means more work for me and I think that there will be another appointment in that role.”
“I don’t think titles really matter whether it’s sporting director, director of football, head of recruitment, or it may be performance director, whatever. There’s so many different titles now, isn’t there? I don’t think it really matters what the title is but it will be mainly focused around recruitment. I think it’s impossible nowadays for a manager to do it and to do it all on his own.”
Outlining what he wants from the position, Lindsey talked about a structured approach to squad building, including maintaining depth charts and ongoing talent tracking across windows.
“I think to have somebody here to do that job, to identify the kind of players that sit into the way we play, to have a depth chart and probably two or three players in each position on the depth chart from window to window.”
He added that recruitment should be a continuous process aimed at marginal gains, whether by additions or by raising the standards of the current group.
“Even though we have a full squad, as it were, you’re kind of always looking to improve on that and whether it’s bringing more in or just improving on top of what you’ve got, you’re always looking.”
Lindsey pushed back on the notion that sweeping changes are required, arguing that underlying performance indicators show Crawley have underperformed against their numbers despite the league position.
“I don’t think there needs to be loads of changes, even though the season so far would suggest that we’re not good because of where we are. I don’t actually think we deserve to be where we are personally.”
“I think that if you look at a lot of the stats, we’re kind of quite high up on a lot of the good stats, you know, really high up, even on XG and things like that. I think we’re top six or seven for XG and for shots on target. I think we’re in the top four or something madness like that, you know?”
He concluded that the priority is to bring in a specialist to lead recruitment processes and embed a clear way of working.
“A lot of the stats are kind of in our favour. So we’ve kind of underperformed a little bit. So, yeah, I think it’s more about having somebody to come in and help along with the recruitment and to really take that mantle on and have a way and a process of working more than anything.”
Writer’s View
Lindsey’s message is consistent: replace the role, not necessarily the title, and double down on process. The emphasis on depth charts and window-to-window tracking fits a recruitment-led reset rather than a wholesale overhaul.
With Crawley sitting in 21st but citing strong metrics, the immediate task is converting those indicators into points, and appointing a specialist to ensure the pipeline of suitable players stays active, targeted and aligned to how his side plays.
