Colby Bishop’s goal on the hour-mark was enough for Accrington Stanley to defeat Crewe Alexandra at the Crown Ground last night.
Manager David Artell made three changes from Saturday’s 4-1 defeat at Portsmouth with Olly Lancashire replacing the injured Omar Beckles in the defence while Owen Dale and Chris Porter replaced Daniel Powell and Offrande Zanzala, both players dropping down to the bench. Former Alex loanee Michael Nottingham started for the hosts.
The opening chance of the game came in the 14th minute as Joe Pritchard’s shot from distance went wide before Nottingham’s long-throw wasn’t dealt with well a couple of minutes later that was cleared by the defence. The first Alex effort came midway through the half with Chris Porter heading Charlie Kirk’s cross towards goal but it was easily saved by Toby Savin before Finney hit the bar with a miss-hit cross a couple of minutes later.
Into the second half with Bishop heading a Rodgers cross wide before the striker would get on the scoresheet in the 59th minute, heading home from close-range after Will Jaaskelainen had saved Matt Butcher’s free-kick.
The next games for the Alex see us travel to Cheltenham Town on Saturday in the 2nd Round of the FA Cup before hosting Swindon Town next Tuesday.
What can we take out of this game?
Credit has to go to Accrington who limited us to a couple of half-chances in the whole game but it was a case of missing Mandron a lot, both as a link-player to move from a defensive phase to an attacking one or even from his hold-up play allowing the side to move up the pitch.
Lancashire was fine on the whole, especially considering that it was his first league start of the season, but Beckles is the best partner for Offord at the club – despite Saturday’s evidence. Though Jaaskelainen will be disappointed with the goal as the ball came off the palm of his hand back into the goal rather than off his finger-tips and away from the goal.
Crown Ground
League 1
24/11/2020 8:00 pm
Attendance: 0
Referee: Anthony Backhouse
| Accrington Stanley | Crewe Alexandra | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bishop | |||||||
| Savin | Jaaskelainen | ||||||
| Nottingham | Ng | ||||||
| Hughes | Lancashire | ||||||
| Burgess | Offord | ||||||
| Rodgers | 73 | Pickering | |||||
| Russell | 46 | Lowery | 73 | ||||
| Conneely | Wintle | 84 | |||||
| Butcher | Finney | ||||||
| Pritchard | Dale | 78 | |||||
| Charles | Porter | 84 | |||||
| Bishop | Kirk | ||||||
Substitutes |
|||||||
| Baxter | Richards | ||||||
| Cassidy | 73 | Powell | 78 | ||||
| Maguire | Ainley | 73 | |||||
| Sangare | 46 | Zanzala | 84 | ||||
| Barclay | Griffiths | ||||||
| Sama | Johnson | ||||||
| Mansell | Murphy | 84 | |||||
Game Statistics |
||
| 18 | Goal attempts | 7 |
| 4 | On Target | 2 |
| 3 | Corners | 8 |
| 7 | Fouls | 9 |
| 1 | Yellow Cards | 2 |
| 0 | Red Cards | 0 |
| 41 | % | 59 |