David Artell admits that he wasn’t in a position to chop and change his Crewe Alexandra side too much for the visit of Oldham Athletic in the Checkatrade Trophy. Crewe narrowly lost the Group D tie 1-0 – a result that sees us exit the competition with a game at Port Vale still to play.

The Crewe Alexandra boss made three chances with Sam Stubbs handed his senior debut in football and George Cooper and Charlie Kirk were handed starts again.  Oldham’s interim boss Richie Wellens named a strong line-up himself as he tries to restore some lost confidence following their indifferent start to their campaign in League One.

Following the 1-0 loss, Artell told us: “It is all about the next game for us. We were not thinking ahead to Stevenage and we won’t be thinking about our forthcoming fixture until Saturday is out of the way first.

“We are not in a position to do that. We couldn’t look at the Oldham game and make a host of changes. We didn’t have the luxury of wanting to rest him and to give him a chance. We wanted to name a strong team and try and get that win.

“It was an opportunity for some. Some of them did alright. Some of them didn’t. Some had a good half and were not so good in the first half.

“The ball won’t go in the net for us at the minute but I thought we were better going forward than we were at Coventry on Saturday.

“We know that games are won in both boxes and Oldham were more clinical than us.”