Crawley Town have announced the departure of former Arsenal youth player and youth coach Colin Kazim-Richards, as one of multiple changes to the club’s key staff.
Photo via Crawley Town
Crawley Town released a club statement this week to confirm that head coach Colin Kazim-Richards has been sacked, along with assistant head coach Julian Gray. The statement added that club director of football Erdem Konyar will also be leaving the club.
The club did add that they’re grateful to Kazim-Richards and Gray for helping the club to avoid relegation last season, and sent them best wishes for the future.
They then confirmed that they’ve appointed Kevin Blackwell as an interim manager as they search for a new permanent manager.
Photo via Crawley Town
Kazim-Richards is a former Arsenal youth player, and he returned to the club’s academy in a coaching capacity back in 2024. After a couple of years back with the Gunners, the coach then got the chance to take the head coach job at Crawley in March 2026.
At the time, Arsenal had youth player Louie Copley on loan at Crawley, and together they managed to save the club from relegation to the National League by one point and a few goals.
Sadly, things haven’t gone so well for either Copley or Kazim-Richards since then. Copley suffered an ACL injury in pre-season, and Crawley started the new campaign with one win in 10 games to sit bottom of the league and six points away from escaping the relegation zone.
Photo via Crawley Town on Instagram
There’s still plenty of time for the club to turn things around, with less than a quarter of the season played and a couple of games in hand on many of the teams above.
But this is the club’s worst start to a season in the last 15 years, and Kazim-Richards won’t be the one in charge of sorting things out now.
Photo via Munoz on Instagram