A brace from Chris Long inside the opening 10 minutes saw Crewe Alexandra defeat Colchester United at the Alexandra Stadium yesterday.
Manager Lee Bell made 3 changes from last Saturday’s 2-2 draw at AFC Wimbledon as Zac Williams, Joe White (for his first league start for the club) and Shilow Tracey with Ryan Cooney dropping down to the bench and both Connor O’Riordan and Conor Thomas missing out.
The opening chance and goal of the game went the hosts’ way in the 3rd minute as Mickey Demetriou’s long throw went straight over the head of Courtney Baker-Richardson straight to Long to score from inside the 6-yard box before the Alex would win a penalty a few minutes later as left wing-back Al-Amin Kazeem brought down Tracey, Long sending U’s Owen Goodman the wrong way from the spot.
Jack Powell’s free-kick evaded Long on 34 minutes before Noah Chilvers hit the post from just outside the area a couple of minutes before the break. The visitors would get one goal back 9 minutes into the second half as Samson Tovide turned the ball in from a right-sided cross before Harvey Davies made a decent diving save to stop Arthur Read midway through the second half.
The next couple of games see the Alex travel to Wrexham next Saturday before returning home against Gillingham the following Tuesday.
Final Thoughts:
It’s a different way of getting the result seeing as we went two goals up and were holding on at the end – I think that it was a bit of a mistake to go to the back 3/5 as early as we did but cannot complain at getting the win without playing anywhere near our best.
Alexandra Stadium
League 2
23/09/2023 4:00 pm
Attendance: 4070
Referee: Charles Breakspear
| Crewe Alexandra | Colchester United | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Long (2) | Tovide | ||||||
| Davies | Goodman | ||||||
| Adebisi | Egbo | ||||||
| Offord | Mitchell | ||||||
| Demetriou | Hall | ||||||
| Williams | Fevrier | ||||||
| Powell | 74 | Read | |||||
| Tabiner | McGeehan | 74 | |||||
| White | 57 | Kazeem | 83 | ||||
| Tracey | 57 | Chilvers | |||||
| Baker-Richardson | Taylor | ||||||
| Long | 74 | Tovide | |||||
Substitutes |
|||||||
| Booth | Smith | ||||||
| Cooney | Greenidge | ||||||
| Holicek | 57 | Bandeira | |||||
| Lunt | 74 | Hopper | |||||
| Nevitt | 74 | Mingi | 74 | ||||
| Rowe | Thomas | ||||||
| Finney | 57 | Ihionvien | 83 | ||||
Game Statistics |
||
| 10 | Goal attempts | 21 |
| 3 | On Target | 6 |
| 6 | Corners | 10 |
| 15 | Fouls | 11 |
| 1 | Yellow Cards | 0 |
| 0 | Red Cards | 0 |
| 40 | % | 60 |