Mark Yates admits the honeymoon period is over for Crawley Town.

The Reds boss had been satisfied with his side’s start to the season prior to their 4-0 defeat at Mansfield Town last weekend.

A revamped squad was always going to take time to settle down under their new manager and a return of six points from a testing schedule in the first month was deemed just about acceptable.

But now Yates says Reds have had more than enough time to find their feet and must move on to the next level ahead of their home game against Yeovil Town today.

Yates said: “We’ve got to put a bit of pressure on ourselves to win some games and that starts immediately. If we had got a result last week I think we would be saying it’s been a decent start but at the moment it’s only been an okay start.

“We don’t want to be 18th or 19th all season but the only way to deal with that is to start winning games. That is the only way to climb the table and if that is by asking that bit more from each other then that is what we have to do.

“I’m still bringing players in but most of them have been here for ten or 11 weeks now so are getting to know each other more. It is time we cranked up the pressure on ourselves a bit. It is not panic stations but we’ve got to start asserting ourselves on the opposition more.

“There’s only been one game where I’ve said to the players ‘let’s stop the opposition’ and that was Portsmouth. Apart from that we have tried to win every game so far so we can’t be labelled as negative but we just need to step it up a notch.”

Yates admits he was shocked by the manner of Crawley’s performance at Mansfield and will be looking for a positive response against the Glovers today.

“Sometimes it happens and you have to look for a response,” added Yates. “We have seen some of the big Premier League clubs asking for players to respond recently and we have to do the same.

“We went through the last performance on Monday and talked about a few things we should have done better but the bottom line is that the players knew they didn’t do themselves justice.

“Once we had dealt with that game we started to get ready for Yeovil and the response in training has been great.”

Gavin Tomlin and Lanre Oyebanjo remain sidelined by injury for today’s game while Matt Harrold and Joe McNerney are major doubts and Gwion Edwards, right, begins a three game ban following his red card at Mansfield.

Yates is likely to hand debuts to new signings Rhys Murphy and Ross Jenkins following their arrivals on Thursday as he bids to heap more misery on a Yeovil side who have made a poor start to the League Two campaign after successive relegations.

Yates said: “I’ve watched all their goals this season and they are a big side who are a threat at set-pieces so we will have to deal with that.

“But there are also places we think they might be a bit vulnerable.

“We are the home team and they haven’t won away yet so we have to put a little bit of pressure on ourselves to win game.”