Crewe Alexandra put Tuesday’s defeat behind them with a home draw against Ipswich Town at the Alexandra Stadium yesterday afternoon. Charlie Kirk gave the Alex the lead with substitute Aaron Drinan equalising for the visitors who ended the game a man short following Teddy Bishop’s red card for two bookings.
Manager David Artell made 5 changes from Tuesday’s 4-1 draw at Gillingham as Billy Jones and Harry Pickering returned to the full-back roles, Luke Murphy came into the midfield with Stephen Walker and Mika Mandron into the front three. Travis Johnson, Tom Lowery, Chris Porter and Owen Dale all dropped down to the bench with Rio Adebisi missing out on the matchday 18.
The opening chance of the game came in the 12th minute saw Gwion Edwards test Dave Richards from distance with the Welsh keeper able to push it away before Mandron would have an effort that was blocked at the other end. Kirk would have the ball in the net on the half-hour mark following a corner played short but he was in an offside position.
The opening goal of the game came in the 59th minute with Mandron winning the ball in midfield, Wintle advancing with it before sliding Kirk in to curl past Town keeper Tomas Holy before Finney fired over from a short free-kick. Ipswich sub Bishop picked up his first yellow 20 minutes from time, stopping a counter from a corner before fellow sub Drinan leveled the score moments after coming on following a mis-control from Olly Lancashire. Bishop got his second yellow for a similar foul to his first card with 8 minutes to play.
The next games for the Alex see a trip to Shrewsbury Town on Tuesday before a longer trip to Peterborough United next Saturday.
What can we take out of this game?
It was good to have both full-backs available again for the game as well as having a much stronger bench than we’ve had in recent weeks. That said we were again short of the performance levels that we had earlier in the season (maybe that’s due to having a couple of weeks off about a month ago rather than just playing games twice a week during that period).
Alexandra Stadium
League 1
30/01/2021 4:00 pm
Attendance: 0
Referee: Ross Joyce
| Crewe Alexandra | Ipswich Town | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kirk | Drinan | ||||||
| Richards | Holy | ||||||
| Jones | Chambers | ||||||
| Lancashire | Woolfenden | ||||||
| Beckles | McGuinness | ||||||
| Pickering | Kenlock | ||||||
| Murphy | 90 | Judge | |||||
| Wintle | Downes | ||||||
| Finney | 79 | Dozzell | |||||
| Walker | 52 | Thomas | 63 | ||||
| Mandron | Sears | 63 | |||||
| Kirk | 79 | Edwards | 75 | ||||
Substitutes |
|||||||
| Jaaskelainen | Cornell | ||||||
| Powell | 79 | Ward | |||||
| Lowery | Norwood | 63 | |||||
| Porter | 90 | Lankester | |||||
| Dale | 52 | Bishop | 63 | ||||
| Johnson | Drinan | 75 | |||||
| Evans | 79 | Baggott | |||||
Game Statistics |
||
| 7 | Goal attempts | 7 |
| 1 | On Target | 2 |
| 4 | Corners | 8 |
| 6 | Fouls | 13 |
| 2 | Yellow Cards | 3 |
| 0 | Red Cards | 1 |
| 54 | % | 46 |