Substitute Stephen Walker scored the first goal of his second loan spell with Crewe Alexandra in their draw at Bloomfield Road against Blackpool last night after Arsenal loanee Dan Ballard opened the scoring for the hosts late in the first half.
Manager David Artell made one change from Saturday’s 2-2 home draw against Sunderland as Antony Evans replaced Luke Murphy in midfield, Regan Griffiths took his place on the bench while Rio Adebisi would also replace Travis Johnson as a substitute.
The opening chance of the game came in the 8th minute with Evans crossing for Chris Porter whose effort was tipped behind by Chris Maxwell before the striker would have another effort that would see Maxwell scramble following a through-ball from Ryan Wintle. Mika Mandron had a goal disallowed for offside on the quarter-hour mark before the hosts took the lead 5 minutes before the break as Ballard headed home an inswinging corner from Luke Garbutt.
Into the second half where Garbutt had an effort saved by Dave Richards before Adebisi headed over from close range with 10 minutes left to play as he was looking for his first professional goal. The replacement full-back would get an assist 5 minutes later with his long-ball taken down by Walker who fired past Maxwell into the bottom corner.
The next games for the Alex see us travel to Lincoln City on Saturday before hosting Doncaster Rovers next Tuesday.
What can we take out of this game?
Another decent enough performance on the road and typical that our right-back went off injured the game that the natural right-back wasn’t on the bench but good to see Adebisi get some more game time (though I’m a little surprised that it wasn’t Lancashire who came on with one of the centre-backs moving across to full-back).
Bloomfield Road
League 1
2/03/2021 8:00 pm
Attendance: 0
Referee: Seb Stockbridge
| Blackpool | Crewe Alexandra | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ballard | Walker | ||||||
| Maxwell | Richards | ||||||
| Lawrence-Gabriel | Daniels | 33 | |||||
| Ballard | Wood | ||||||
| Thorniley | Beckles | ||||||
| Garbutt | Pickering | ||||||
| Ward | Evans | 83 | |||||
| Virtue-Thick | Wintle | ||||||
| Stewart | Lowery | ||||||
| Kaikai | 57 | Kirk | 83 | ||||
| Yates | Mandron | ||||||
| Simms | 57 | Porter | 71 | ||||
Substitutes |
|||||||
| Moore | Jaaskelainen | ||||||
| Robson | Powell | 83 | |||||
| Dougall | Lancashire | ||||||
| Mitchell | 57 | Griffiths | |||||
| Turton | Dale | 71 | |||||
| Hamilton | 57 | Adebisi | 33 | ||||
| Embleton | Walker | 83 | |||||
Game Statistics |
||
| 9 | Goal attempts | 10 |
| 3 | On Target | 3 |
| 6 | Corners | 5 |
| 11 | Fouls | 11 |
| 3 | Yellow Cards | 0 |
| 0 | Red Cards | 0 |
| 39 | % | 61 |