John Gregory felt Crawley were worthy winners following their 2-1 success at home to Leyton Orient.
Goals from on-loan Swansea winger Gwion Edwards, with his second in as many games on his full debut, and Andy Drury consolidated 12th place in League One.
The win also ended Orient’s outside hopes of pipping Brentford to the second automatic promotion spot.
Gregory said: “We deserved the victory. We always knew it would be an exceptionally difficult game against Leyton Orient who are a very good team, even though we won there earlier this season.
“It was a very close game, they probably started better than us but we got the first goal.
“Orient kept possession very well and at times we were on the backfoot but we worked exceptionally hard and we got a quality second goal.
“It was a brilliant ball from Michael Jones straight on the head of Andy Drury. After that I really couldn’t see us losing the game.”
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