Crewe Alexandra boss David Artell says he will continue to assess if his players can cope with playing three games in eight days.

The Alex boss believes that some of his younger players may struggle to churn out performance after performance if they are asked to play Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday and he will work closely with the club’s sports science department to see who may well be suffering with fatigue.

Crewe produced their best performance of the season when beating Notts County 2-0. but we couldn’t follow that up against John Coleman’s Accrington Stanley a few days later.

Artell told the club’s official web-site: “We have looked at the data and some of the players did run about more against Notts County than normal.

“We asked them to go and do it again against Accrington and if I’m honest, some of them struggled with that. The Notts County game was tough both mentally and physically and may have had affected some of the younger ones.

The boss added: “When you are fatigued it is important that you dig deep and come through it. They did that against Notts County very well. They are a fit bunch and are grafting, but sometimes it is difficult for some of them to play three games in eight days.”