Steve Davis says pressure has to be better on the ball to stop shots

Steve Davis has demanded better protection on our goal after Shrewsbury’s two goals from the edge of our box on Monday. The Alex ended up losing the game 2-1 to the Shrews after Larnell Cole’s early effort took a deflection off Ollie Turton and then from a similar position in stoppage time, Shaun Whalley curled an effort past Jon Guthrie and into Ben Garratt’s top corner.

Ahead of our weekend clash against Coventry City, the Alex boss told crewealex.net: “When you have players shooting from 30, 35 yards out then you should expect your goalkeeper to save it. We should deal with that.

“When they are closer in and get into the 25 yards or 20 mark then you have to put pressure on the ball. I didn’t think we did that well enough on Monday. We didn’t get close enough and they have scored similar goals.

“We have got to get closer, make those blocks and protect our goal better. We didn’t do well enough on two occasions and we got punished for it.”