Shaun Miller came off the bench against his former club and got the winner 17 minutes from time as Crewe Alexandra win their 5th straight home game against promotion-chasing Carlisle United at the Alexandra Stadium last night.
Manager David Artell named an unchanged line-up from Saturday’s game at Macclesfield Town with Ben Garratt and Charlie Kirk keeping their places in the starting 11 after poor performances at the weekend whilst Oliver Finney replaced Nicky Hunt on the bench.
The opening opportunity and goal came in the third minute with Harry Pickering’s low cross turned in by Chris Porter from 6-yards out, the forward’s 10th goal of the season, before he almost added a second 3 minutes later but his effort was saved by Adam Collin in the visitors’ goal.
The biggest moment of the game came on 17 minutes with Jamie Devitt sent off for violent conduct for kicking Perry Ng before the visitors levelled on 29 minutes. The ball was played from their left across the pitch with right wing-back, after an early change in shape, Gary Miller getting his first goal of the season with a drive across Garratt from the edge of the area.
Into the second half, where the ball was retained well without going forward quickly but Porter headed a Kirk cross straight at Collin before the winger had a goal disallowed for a tight offside call moments later. Paul Green had a couple of efforts, the first blocked by a defender before his second was saved before the hosts would take the lead with 18 minutes remaining.
A free-kick was played in from the right by Ainley and headed away to Kirk, his cross knocked down by Nolan into the path of Shaun Miller who tucked it away under Collin from 8-yards out.
We travel to Paul Scholes’ Oldham Athletic on Saturday before a home game against Exeter City a week later.
What have we learnt from this game?
It was a game that won’t live long in the memory, unlike Saturday for example, but showed that we have something about us this season that could see us finish higher in the table. Again, it was a great start with a superb cross from Pickering to put it on a plate for Porter before a moment of stupidity from Jamie Devitt, the player that was described by Jack Cousin as the key man in the match preview, which saw him kick out at Perry after the ref had already stopped the game for an Alex free-kick.
We’d have drawn or even lost this sort of game last season which shows a little more nous on our behalf and it was good to see that their tactics of trying to kick us and stop us from playing didn’t get something out of the game in the end.
Alexandra Stadium
League 2
12/02/2019 8:45 pm
Attendance: 3476
Referee: Paul Marsden
| Crewe Alexandra | Carlisle United | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Porter, Miller | Miller | ||||||
| Garratt | Collin | ||||||
| Ng | Miller | 77 | |||||
| Ray | Gerrard | ||||||
| Nolan | Parkes | ||||||
| Pickering | Grainger | ||||||
| Ainley | 77 | O'Hare | 60 | ||||
| Green | Etuhu | ||||||
| Wintle | Slater | ||||||
| Bowery | 63 | Thomas | 20 | ||||
| Porter | Devitt | ||||||
| Kirk | 88 | Hope | |||||
Substitutes |
|||||||
| Richards | Gray | ||||||
| Miller | 63 | Liddle | 20 | ||||
| Lowery | 77 | Jones | |||||
| Dale | 88 | Cullen | 77 | ||||
| Finney | Grant | ||||||
| Taylor-Sinclair | Scougall | 60 | |||||
| Sterry | McCarron | ||||||
Game Statistics |
||
| 11 | Goal attempts | 6 |
| 6 | On Target | 3 |
| 5 | Corners | 2 |
| 8 | Fouls | 17 |
| 2 | Yellow Cards | 4 |
| 0 | Red Cards | 1 |
| 57 | % | 43 |