Crewe striker Alex Nicholls said he was delighted to get off the mark on his Alex debut with not only one, but two goals.

The 30-year-old joined from Barnet in the summer & impressed on debut against Morecambe with his all-around performance as well as his goals.

Striker Chris Porter notched a brace on his Alex debut too in the first game of last season, a 2-2 draw with Mansfield, and went on to notch 12 in 2017/18 despite missing a spell through injury.

Despite being pleased with the dream start to life at Gresty Road, Nicholls is now focussing on a tough trip to Newport this weekend.

He said: “It was a really good start, and it was nice to get off the mark so early. It's always a good thing for a striker to get a goal early when he starts at a new Club, hopefully they are the first goals of many.

"I was delighted but it was a team effort, the lads were brilliant.

"At my previous club the onus was on me to be the creator, but here there are players around me who can create for me.

"I want to be the one scoring the goals – it's good to create them as well – but as a striker you want to score and it's nice to have people in the team who you know are going to create for you.

"Newport is a tough place to go, they are always hard to beat, but we are full confidence. We'll be working hard this week, there will be no let-up.

"If you want to achieve something in this division you have to put your mark in the sand.

"You have to show your quality and teams are going to come and try to stop you, but if we want to achieve what I think we're capable of we'll have to overcome obstacles like that.

"Saturday's result is only good if we go to Newport and get a positive result, and get some momentum.

"We're not going to score six goals every week, we know we'll have to grind results out and clean sheets are important."