Boss looks for improvement in final third following Brentford defeat

Alex boss Steve Davis wants his forward players to perform like they did away at Bradford City rather than they did at home to Brentford to test our near neighbours Port Vale this weekend. Crewe is hopeful that our on-loan striker Uche Ikpeazu will return from injury after he missed the club’s 3-1 defeat to the current league leaders.

Davis was disappointed that we didn’t test the Brentford goalkeeper David Button on too many occasions at the weekend and felt that the two wide players isolated Chuks Aneke on occasions.

Steve is looking for an improvement when a front four scored three at Valley Parade and remained a handful all afternoon.

Steve told crewealex.net: “It was a blow to lose Uche as he had come into the side for his full debut and scored two goals. He wasn’t 100% match fit and we have had to be cautious with him because he has not played a lot of football this season. 

“Because of Uche being out and the quality of Brentford’s midfield we changed our shape on Saturday to even things up in the middle of the park, but we dropped deeper and we didn’t support Chuks enough. He was often isolated up there and we couldn’t get up the pitch as well as we did at Bradford.

“The wingers didn’t defend right or close the centre-halves down enough like we had worked on. We didn’t do well enough and were not as much as a threat as we should have been. We gave it a go when Byron came on and we could have started like that but we knew where Brentford’s strengths were and ha to pack the middle of the park a bit more.

“They ended up scoring three goals that will be contenders for goal of the season and there wasn’t a lot we could have done about that.

He added: “Saying that we needed to be better to put them more pressure and have worked on us being more of a threat this week.”