David Artell said it was a pleasing start to the club’s pre-season fixtures with comfortable run-outs at Kidsgrove Athletic and Buxton FC.

Crewe ran out 7-2 at Kidsgrove with Charlie Kirk hitting a first half hat-trick. New summer signing Chris Porter scored a brace on his first outing for the club and George Cooper and Tom Lowery were also on target with splendid finishes.

Assistant manager Kenny Lunt took the group to Buxton FC and oversaw a 3-1 win with a Ollie Finney free-kick taking a slight deflection on its way in. Brad Walker added a second goal in the second half before youngster Lewis Reilly completed the scoring.

After the 7-2 friendly run-out at Kidsgrove, Artell said: “There were a lot of positives. We played some good football for large parts of the game. We looking threatening for the majority of the game and scored some very good goals. We looked sharp and it was a good work out.

“We also gave away two shocking goals, one from a set play. We haven’t done the work on the set pieces yet but we will be. We will doing a lot of work on that.

“The objective was to get most of them 90 minutes and get them closer to full fitness. We were also injury free, so that is pleasing as well.”