Mark Yates insists Crawley Town are over-achieving this season.

Reds go into today’s home game with Notts County in 13th place in League Two and just five points adrift of the play-offs. They are also four points and five places above the Magpies despite Yates having to operate with a far smaller budget.

Asked if he would have taken Crawley’s current position at the start of the season Yates said: “I would have bitten your hands off. I want to say to supporters and players that still aiming to get into the play-offs but things are tight here. I think people realise what we are working with but players can be relatively pleased with the season so far.

“I think they (Notts County) will have expected to be in a better position than they are but you can have all the money in the world but unless you are working together and the spirit within the group is right then things don’t always go your way.

“We have a small tight knight group who we work hard with and pride ourselves on spirit in camp and stood us in reasonably good stead for season so far. I don’t know why things haven’t happened for them but there are plenty of games left and they have certainly got the players to get up where it matters still.”

Reds will be bidding for an eighth win in their last nine home games against a County side who have not won on their travels since August and sacked manager Ricardo Moniz two weeks ago. It is the first of three games in their next four against teams in the bottom eight in the table giving Crawley an opportunity to close the gap on the top eight.

Yates added: “It is a big ask but that’s the plan. There are still 20 games for us to get where we want to get to but along the way we will have to find a level of consistency we perhaps haven’t hit so far but we are capable of that.”