After Tuesday night’s penalty defeat to League 1 side Fleetwood Town in the first round of the Carabao Cup it was back to league action against promotion favourites MK Dons at the Alexandra Stadium yesterday.
Manager David Artell made one change from Tuesday night’s game with vice-captain Paul Green returning to the team in place of Charlie Kirk with James Jones moving back out onto the right of the midfield 4 and Callum Ainley switching to the left.
Crewe started off on the front-foot with chances coming falling to Ainley and Jones in the opening 10 minutes although Carlisle should have taken the lead just before the break as Cissé’s cross was headed against the post by Kieran Agard from inside the 6-yard box. Not much happened in the second-half as far as chances were concerned with substitute Chris Porter was adjudged offside from Harry Pickering‘s through-ball whilst Pickering was on the receiving end of a dreadful two-footed challenge from Mathieu Baudrey, the Dons’ substitute sent-off within 10 minutes of coming on.
We have 2 away games this week with a trip to Colchester United on Tuesday night followed by a trip north to Brunton Park to face Carlisle United next Saturday.
What can we learn from this game?
Based purely off that game we can look forward to looking towards the top of the table rather than looking towards the bottom seeing as MK Dons are one of the fancied sides to be in the top few positions this season as well as them winning all 3 games of the season before yesterday. Another positive was that we kept our second clean-sheet of the season (it took 1 less game than last season but our third didn’t come until October) but one problem from a Crewe perspective was that it was another blank in the goals for column.