Second-half goals from James Jones and Charlie Kirk, the latter being scored in the 98th minute, saw Crewe Alexandra defeat Oldham Athletic at the Alexandra Stadium yesterday afternoon despite Jonny Smith giving the visitors the lead just after half-time.
Following a hamstring injury to Daniel Powell in the warm-up, manager David Artell made one change from last Saturday night’s 2-1 away win against Walsall as Middlesbrough loanee Stephen Walker replaced him in the starting line-up with Nicky Hunt returning to the bench.
The opening chance of the game came in the 13th minute with Ollie Finney finding Kirk with his finish not hitting the target in the best chance of the first period. The Latics opened the scoring 3 minutes after the break with Nepo pulling the ball back for Smith to score from 12 yards out.
The Alex would level the score 10 minutes into the second-half with Kirk finding Jones with his goalwards stab palmed into his own net by Zeus de la Paz in the Oldham goal. Midway through the half, Jones found Finney in who turn found Walker with his effort saved by de la Paz. After more pressure that saw substitute Chris Porter head wide from a set-piece, it would be the hosts that would take all 3 points with an injury-time winner. After good play between Harry Pickering and substitute Ainley, the latter found the overlapping Kirk who cut inside 3 players to fire into the bottom corner.
Our next two games see a home game against Crawley Town on Tuesday before a trip to Plymouth Argyle next Saturday.
What can we learn from this game?
It’s another game that saw us come from behind (that’s 25 points for those counting) but it just shows the level of resilience in the squad and belief in each others’ ability to work so hard for each other.
Also credit has to go to referee Sam Purkiss for adding on as much time as he did seeing as Oldham were wasting time from about 20 minutes in which got much worse the longer the time went on.