Early disallowed goals for both teams saw a goalless draw between Crewe Alexandra and Shrewsbury Town at the Alexandra Stadium yesterday afternoon.
Manager David Artell made two changes from Wednesday’s 2-1 home win against Charlton Athletic with Callum Ainley and Luke Murphy replacing Zac Williams and Scott Robertson, who missed out through illness and injury respectively. On the Alex bench were Josh Lundstram and Tyreece Onyeka (back from loan deals at Solihull Moors and Stalybridge Celtic) as well as second-year scholars Sean Lawton, Connor Salisbury and Joel Tabiner (less than 24 hours after the FA Youth Cup defeat at Leicester City on Friday night). Former Alex players Elliott Bennett and Daniel Udoh would start for the visitors.
The opening chance came in the 3rd minute with a Shrewsbury corner ending up in the net but disallowed for a foul on Dave Richards before Mika Mandron would suffer a similar fate following an offside in the build-up 13 minutes later.
Chris Long would drag a shot wide in the 27th minute before Ryan Bowman did the same at the other end a minute later. Oli Finney would have a couple of headers wide before Nathanael Ogbeta’s cross from the left would see Bowman hit the side-netting with an effort.
Ainley would drag a shot wide from the edge of the area 9 minutes after the break before Richards would deny Matt Pennington a headed goal with a great save in the final 10 minutes.
Our next couple of games sees the Alex a trip to Cambridge United next Saturday before hosting Rotherham United the following Saturday.
What can we take out of this game?
Getting a point from a game like that against a team in form was satisfactory, especially considering the threadbare nature of the matchday squad. We were dealt a blow with Murphy going off within the opening quarter-hour but we were limited with the changes that could be made – Artell not really having much choice to use the 3 he did – including giving Onyeka his debut.