David Artell says that Crewe Alexandra produced one of their best first half performances of the season to score four goals inside 27 minutes at Mansfield at the weekend. Our 4-3 victory now sees us 13 points clear of the relegation drop zone.

Crewe thoroughly deserved to hold on to all three points despite the Stags scoring twice in the second half to stage a grandstand finish.    

Artell told crewealex.net: “A win makes a world of difference to your weekend and I said after the game on Saturday that the performance was a lot more than the last 20 minutes. We should have been 5-1, 6-1, 6-2 up before they came back into it. We had more chances and didn’t take them.

“Shaun had a great chance just minutes into the second half and Jordan has fired over the crossbar, and when you don’t finish them off then they get one back and then another and everyone is thinking it is close now.

“That should not take anything away from our first half performance. They were absolutely terrific. They couldn’t get anywhere near us and they were all good finishes from us.

He added: “Then in the last 20 minutes we had to stand up to it again. We did it at Newport. We had to do it at times against Port Vale and that is part of the game. They showed that resilience again and we deserved to win the game.”