Rio Adebisi’s second goal of the season was not enough for 10-man Crewe Alexandra to defeat bottom-of-the-league Rochdale at the Alexandra Stadium yesterday as defender Connor O’Riordan was shown a second yellow card in the final few minutes, the first red card of his senior career.
Manager Lee Bell named an unchanged team from Tuesday’s 0-0 draw at Walsall as former Alex Academy graduate Toby Mullarkey started for the visitors in their defence.
The opening chance fell to the visitors in the 2nd minute with James Beadle making a great double save to deny Owen Dodgson from distance as well as Ian Henderson’s follow-up before the Brighton loanee would turn Danny Lloyd’s strike from outside the area wide for a corner. Both O’Riordan and Sean Robertson would pick up early bookings from referee Ben Toner before Adebisi would head wide from a Joel Tabiner cross just before the break.
Dan Agyei would shoot wide following a bad throw from Dale keeper Jake Eastwood just before the hour-mark before the Alex took the lead in the 71st minute, Tabiner played a 1-2 with Southampton loanee Ryan Finnigan with his cross headed in by Adebisi from 10 yards out before the equaliser came 9 minutes later as a cross from Mullarkey was headed against the post by Keohane with the midfielder reacting first to score the rebound. O’Riordan was shown his second yellow card of the afternoon 3 minutes from time as he brought down Dodgson 5 yards outside the penalty area.
The next games for the Alex see them travel to Sutton United next Saturday before hosting Salford City the following Friday.
What can we take out of this game?
The Alex owe that point to the brilliance of Beadle, especially in the opening 5 minutes where he made a couple of great saves with the Adebisi goal coming from a good bit of football (one of the rare play from either team that the teams will be happy with) on the Alex right.
Alexandra Stadium
League 2
25/02/2023 4:00 pm
Attendance: 4387
Referee: Ben Toner
| Crewe Alexandra | Rochdale | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adebisi | Keohane | ||||||
| Beadle | Eastwood | ||||||
| O'Riordan | Mullarkey | ||||||
| McDonald | Ebanks-Landell | ||||||
| Offord | Taylor | 90 | |||||
| Robertson | 53 | Odoh | 63 | ||||
| Finnigan | Keohane | ||||||
| Uwakwe | Brierley | ||||||
| Adebisi | Lloyd | 81 | |||||
| Tabiner | 90 | Dodgson | |||||
| Agyei | Henderson | ||||||
| Nevitt | Rodney | 81 | |||||
Substitutes |
|||||||
| Richards | Craven | ||||||
| Thomas | Seriki | 81 | |||||
| Ainley | 53 | Mellor | 81 | ||||
| Griffiths | 83 | Graham | |||||
| Brook | Quigley | 63 | |||||
| Sambou | Campbell | 90 | |||||
| Sass-Davies | 90 | Diagouraga | |||||
Game Statistics |
||
| 17 | Goal attempts | 13 |
| 5 | On Target | 5 |
| 3 | Corners | 7 |
| 8 | Fouls | 10 |
| 2 | Yellow Cards | 1 |
| 1 | Red Cards | 0 |
| 52 | % | 48 |