First-half goals from Alfie Doughty and Conor Washington saw Crewe Alexandra lose their first game back in League 1, after 4 seasons in the league below, to recently relegated Charlton Athletic at the Alexandra Stadium yesterday afternoon.
Manager David Artell made 6 changes from Tuesday night’s 3-2 victory at Bolton in the EFL Trophy with Will Jaaskelainen making his first appearance of the season, Perry Ng and Luke Offord come into the defence, Luke Murphy and Oliver Finney started in midfield with Charlie Kirk playing in the front 3. Dave Richards, Callum Ainley, Offrande Zanzala, Josh Lundstram and Billy Sass-Davies all dropped down to the bench while Travis Johnson was not involved. Former Alex loanee Chuks Aneke was on the visitors’ bench.
The opening chance of the game came with less than 30 seconds of the game with captain Ng firing over from 25 yards with the opening goal of the game coming midway through the opening period after Kirk lost the ball in the midfield area with the ball played into the path of Doughty who finished with his left foot across Jaaskelainen into the bottom corner. Ng almost equalised from close range 10 minutes before the break with Mikael Mandron nodding down a Kirk corner but the skipper couldn’t keep his shot down before the visitors doubled the lead a couple of minutes before the break, getting on the end of a knockdown from Adedeji Oshilaja.
The second-half saw Will make a save early on but from there it was Alex pressure, first Ryan Wintle had an effort that was saved by Ben Amos in the Addicks goal before the former Alex youngster denied Mandron’s header with a great left-handed save from an Omar Beckles flick-on. An Ng cross was turned onto the roof of the net from Kirk with just over 10 minutes before Mandron hit the bar from the edge of the area with a curling effort.
The next games for the Alex see a trip to Hull City next Saturday before hosting MK Dons at the Alexandra Stadium the following Saturday.
What can we take out of this game?
It was not a good first-half display from the Alex, both in terms of on the pitch as well as the sound of iFollow which first sounded like gunfire before losing sound completely. We were a little off the pace in the opening period compared to Charlton who were quicker mentally than we were with the midfield in general not keeping the ball well. The second half was much better but how much of that was due to Artell and Lunt’s half-time input or the visitors’ taking their collective feet off the pedal.
Not playing in midweek due to going out of the Carabao Cup last week will see us look to improve in front of goal, Amos in this game was only troubled by the Mandron header.
Alexandra Stadium
League 1
12/09/2020 4:00 pm
Attendance: 0
Referee: Graham Salisbury
| Crewe Alexandra | Charlton Athletic | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Doughty, Washington | |||||||
| Jaaskelainen | Amos | ||||||
| Ng | Barker | ||||||
| Beckles | Pratley | ||||||
| Offord | Oshilaja | ||||||
| Pickering | Purrington | ||||||
| Murphy | 62 | Lapslie | 60 | ||||
| Wintle | Forster-Caskey | ||||||
| Finney | 75 | Gilbey | |||||
| Dale | 75 | Doughty | 90 | ||||
| Mandron | Bonne | ||||||
| Kirk | Washington | 76 | |||||
Substitutes |
|||||||
| Richards | Maynard-Brewer | ||||||
| Ainley | 62 | Williams | 60 | ||||
| Zanzala | 75 | Aneke | 76 | ||||
| Lancashire | Morgan | 90 | |||||
| Lundstram | 75 | Oztumer | |||||
| Sass-Davies | Levitt | ||||||
| Johnson | Vennings | ||||||
Game Statistics |
||
| 19 | Goal attempts | 8 |
| 5 | On Target | 4 |
| 4 | Corners | 6 |
| 13 | Fouls | 17 |
| 0 | Yellow Cards | 2 |
| 0 | Red Cards | 0 |
| 53 | % | 47 |