Crawley head coach John Yems was full of praise for former Albion youngster James Tiley after he produced a piece of magic to give them a 1-0 win over Mansfield at The People’s Pension Stadium.

The 23-year-old scored a volley in stoppage time to help the Reds make it three consecutive wins and clean sheets in League Two.

But Yems admits he had not realised that Tiley had scored.

He said: “At first I thought it had gone wide, then I saw everyone jumping down and thought he must have scored.

“I am really pleased for James with him being local as well. I thought Jordan Maguire-Drew put a shift in, as did Jake Hesketh and these are players that have not played for a while.

“But every game you have to be careful as I said last week about managing that because the players want to stay on and play all the time, but you have to be careful with the amount of games we have got coming up, we have to make sure we balance it up and make sure we share the workload around the squad.”

Mansfield went close to taking the lead early on after Jamie Reid came close with an overhead kick, which forced Glenn Morris into a good save.

Tom Nichols went close to putting Crawley ahead as he struck the bar following a corner. Jack Powell’s floated delivery found the striker on the penalty spot, the striker’s effort looped onto the crossbar as Marek Stech was quick to claim the loose ball.

Nicols went close again in the 57th minute, after former Albion players, Jordan Maguire-Drew and Archie Davies linked up brilliantly on the right wing and Davies then drilled a low cross in towards Nichols, but his effort was palmed away by Stech.

Just as the game looked as though it was heading for a goalless draw, Tilley produces some magic to give the Reds all three points. The substitute shrugged off his man on the wing before firing a venomous half volley past Stech.

Yems praised the impact the substitutes made for his side.

He said: That’s the good thing now with the subs, where they are getting fit after the Covid, which meant we couldn’t train and that. But now we have had a couple of friendlies and people are making the difference when they come on as opposed to making the numbers up.

“I think Josh Wright did well when he came on and put a shift in. That is something we can look forward to in the future him and Jack Powell, you have got people that want to play.”

The victory sees Crawley move up to tenth place in the table and they are six points off the play-off places, with two games in hand over some of the sides above them.