Crewe Alexandra manager David Artell says his side were deservedly beaten by the current League Two leaders and he was disappointed by his side’s overall performance in our 3-0 defeat saying we were too deep in the first half. Crewe were second best at St. James’ Park and lacked moments of creativity to really cause Paul Tisdale’s side too many problems on the day.

Following our second successive defeat, Artell told crewealex.net: “We had too many players playing well below their standard. When you have six or seven off their game then you are not going to win games, never mind when you come to the league leaders who are flying at the moment.

“We were a bit better in the second half but we told them at half-time. We were playing far too deep and the objective of the game is not to sit on the edge of the box and pass it around. We needed to be further up the pitch and the objective is to score goals and stop them.

“They are a good team but we made it far too easy for them with the mistakes we made for the goals. They go one up from a corner when we didn’t clear it. That is not luck that it drops to them. You cannot make mistakes like that and I’ve told them that the standard has dropped. It hasn’t dropped by much but it has slightly. We have got to be better than nice.

“It isn’t all doom and gloom because we are a decent side but we have to be better than that and a lot more of a threat. We should have had a penalty. That was nailed on when Owen was fouled and we could have taken the lead through George before they did, but we know we have to be better when we are playing teams like Exeter.

“We were fine at times, I didn’t think it was a 3-0 type of game but like I’ve said we have got to be better than fine.”