Substitutes Anthony Pilkington and Ellis Harrison would come off the bench and score as struggling Fleetwood Town defeated bottom club Crewe Alexandra at the Alexandra Stadium yesterday. Harvey Macadam opened the scoring for the visitors with Chris Long levelling just before the break.
Manager David Artell made three changes to the starting 11 from the last game at home to Bolton Wanderers a fortnight ago with Scott Kashket returning at left wing-back, midfielder Luke Murphy and forward Chris Porter coming in for Rekeem Harper, Regan Griffiths and Josh Lundstram all dropping down to the bench.
The opening chance came in the 17th minute with a Tom Lowery corner taken short to Callum Ainley and was headed over by Chris Porter before the visitors took the lead a couple of minutes later as a left-sided Harrison Biggins cross was headed in by the unmarked Macadam. The equaliser would come on the stroke of half-time with Long’s drive from outside the area flying into the top corner with his weaker left foot.
Oli Finney would head over in the opening minute after the break before Fleetwood would take the lead in the 65th minute with substitute Pilkington glancing another unmarked header from a right-sided Callum Camps cross into the bottom corner. The third came 8 minutes later with Pilkington forcing Dave Richards into a great save with Harrison tucking in the rebound with the ball rolling in slowly.
Our next couple of games sees the Alex travel to MK Dons on Tuesday night before travelling to Doncaster Rovers next Saturday.
What can we take out of this game?
Our eighth straight home defeat and the 13th in just 14 games overall.
It’s a case of more goals that were conceded to unmarked headers (two more in this game and god knows how many for the season) but for some more decent saves from Richards, it would have been a bigger defeat for the Alex.
Alexandra Stadium
League 1
2/04/2022 4:00 pm
Attendance: 3813
Referee: Will Finnie
| Crewe Alexandra | Fleetwood Town | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Long | Macadam, Pilkington, Harrison | ||||||
| Richards | Cairns | ||||||
| Johnson | Nsiala | ||||||
| Offord | Clarke | ||||||
| Williams | 65 | Jules | |||||
| Ainley | Johnson | ||||||
| Lowery | Camps | ||||||
| Murphy | 78 | Biggins | 71 | ||||
| O. Finney | Lane | ||||||
| Kashket | 65 | Macadam | |||||
| Porter | Hayes | 59 | |||||
| Long | Garner | 59 | |||||
Substitutes |
|||||||
| Jaaskelainen | O'Hara | ||||||
| Harper | 78 | Harrop | |||||
| Griffiths | Butterworth | ||||||
| Sambou | 65 | Harrison | 59 | ||||
| Lundstram | Pilkington | 59 | |||||
| Onyeka | Batty | 71 | |||||
| O'Riordan | 65 | Baggley | |||||
Game Statistics |
||
| 17 | Goal attempts | 13 |
| 7 | On Target | 7 |
| 10 | Corners | 1 |
| 7 | Fouls | 10 |
| 0 | Yellow Cards | 0 |
| 0 | Red Cards | 0 |
| 61 | % | 39 |