A brace from Joel Colwill saw Cheltenham Town defeat Crewe Alexandra to end the visitors’ unbeaten run at Whaddon Road yesterday despite Jack Lankester giving the Alex the lead early in the second half.
Manager Lee Bell made 1 change from last Friday’s 0-0 home draw against Colchester United as Jack Powell made his first league start in over a year as he replaced Max Sanders, the latter dropping down to the bench. Former Alex loanee Sam Stubbs started for the hosts in their defence.
The first chance came in the 2nd minute as captain Mickey Demetriou couldn’t turn in a Joel Tabiner corner at the near post before Cheltenham’s first chance came 8 minutes later, a Thomas in-swinging corner was turned wide from 6 yards out. The next chance came on the half-hour mark as Lankester’s right-sided cross was turned goalwards from 5 yards out by Shilow Tracey and was denied by a great save from Joe Day before the former Cambridge man would force another save from Day from a Demetriou long-throw although the whistle had already gone for a foul.
The Alex would take the lead 11 minutes after the break as Matus Holicek was allowed to take the ball from the half-way line to midway inside the Robins, his ball into the box was controlled by Lankester with the forward placing the ball into the bottom corner of Day’s net before the hosts equalised 20 minutes from time as an in-swinging corner from Thomas was turned goalwards by Bakare, his effort was saved by Filip Marschall with Colwill scoring from inside the 6-yard box. The on-loan Cardiff City midfielder would get his second 7 minutes from time as a right-sided cross was cleared by Demetriou straight to Colwill who curled in from the edge of the area.
The next games for the Alex see them travelling to MK Dons on Sunday before hosting Carlisle United on New Year’s Day (that game will be live on SkySports+).
Final Thoughts:
Well the unbeaten run had to come to an end at some point but I’m not sure what Bell was trying to do with the change of shape just after the hour-mark (taking both Powell who made his first start in 14 months in the league and Holicek off after he was booked both made sense but changing shape and going 2v3 in the centre of the park where we had the man disadvantage didn’t make any sense).
Whaddon Road
League 2
26/12/2024 3:00 pm
Attendance: 5261
Referee: Alan Young
| Cheltenham Town | Crewe Alexandra | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Colwill (2) | Lankester | ||||||
| Day | Marschall | ||||||
| Jude-Boyd | Connolly | 86 | |||||
| Bakare | Demetriou (c) | ||||||
| Stubbs | Williams | ||||||
| Bradbury | Cooney | ||||||
| Young (c) | Holicek | 63 | |||||
| Kinsella | 65 | Powell | 63 | ||||
| Thomas | Tabiner | ||||||
| Colwill | Conway | ||||||
| Archer | Tracey | ||||||
| Miller | 65 | Lankester | |||||
Substitutes |
|||||||
| Evans | Knight-Lebel | ||||||
| Laing | Sanders | 63 | |||||
| Bowman | 65 | Long | 86 | ||||
| Dulson | Bogle | 63 | |||||
| Bennett | Lunt | ||||||
| Payne | Finney | ||||||
| Pett | 65 | Billington | |||||
Game Statistics |
||
| 14 | Goal attempts | 9 |
| 5 | On Target | 4 |
| 4 | Corners | 6 |
| 14 | Fouls | 14 |
| 1 | Yellow Cards | 4 |
| 0 | Red Cards | 0 |
| 49 | % | 51 |