Assistant manager says open floor debate will help us going forward.

Crewe Alexandra’s assistant manager James Collins says that the squad had an ‘open and honest’ discussion following the 3-0 defeat at Peterborough United on Saturday. The club’s management and players were not happy with the overall performance at London Road and they went through the analysis of the 90 minutes in-depth yesterday.

It was the first time this season that manager Steve Davis felt that some of his players lacked real self-belief and that competitive edge to get something from the game.

Collins revealed to the club’s official web-site: “We always go through the DVD of the matches. We highlight clips of the attacking play and the mistakes we can make. It is healthy to highlight that and then work on it going forward.

“We did that again after the Peterborough game because we were not happy with the performance. We had some good spells of football in the game but lacked that class and quality to really test them.

“When you combine that with some mistakes in our defending, then it is not a good combination to have when you want to get results.

“We opened it up to the floor a bit and it was a good discussion with the players. The more senior players spoke up and there was some good feedback from them. There were some sensible and intelligent things said and when that comes from the players then it only helps us going forward.

“The modern day footballer doesn’t say too much, especially the younger ones, but it was useful for us moving forward. It helps us go in the right direction.”