Tom Lockyer’s return to competitive action could not inspire 10-man Bristol Rovers as they were thrashed 4-0 at Crawley – their fourth successive league defeat.<\/p>\n
Defender Lockyer, 30, started the game and successfully came through 57 minutes in his first competitive match since December 2023 when he suffered a cardiac arrest during Luton’s Premier League game against Bournemouth.<\/p>\n
A first half own goal from Alfie Kilgour and second half strikes by Harry Forster, Scott Malone and Louis Flower gave Crawley their first win in six league outings.<\/p>\n
After a cagey opening, the game came to life after 34 minutes when Rovers defender Jack Sparkes received a straight red card for handling a corner from Kyle Scott.<\/p>\n
Striker Ryan Loft stepped up to take the penalty but his spot kick cannoned off keeper Luke Southwood’s right-hand post.<\/p>\n
Rovers striker Shaqai Forde had a shot come back off the underside of the bar before Crawley broke the deadlock when defender Kilgour deflected a shot from Malone into his own net deep into first half added time.<\/p>\n
The Red Devils doubled their advantage seven minutes after the break through substitute Forster who netted easily at the far post from Malone’s cross, and Malone made it 3-0 after 70 minutes with a close-range shot.<\/p>\n
Substitute Flower sealed victory by firing home four minutes from time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tom Lockyer’s return to competitive action could not inspire 10-man Bristol Rovers as they were thrashed 4-0 at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":225644,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-225643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}