David Artell, the Crewe Alexandra manager, has been pleased with our return of nine points from a possible 15 over the festive period and even more so that our wins over Crawley, Chesterfield and Grimsby have been achieved with a clean-sheet.

Crewe responded well from our 3-1 defeat at the Abbey Stadium by comfortably beating Grimsby Town on New Year’s Day thanks to first half goals from Chris Porter and Brad Walker.

“If someone had offered us three wins out of the five games, I would have probably taken that, “said Artell. “It has not been a bad festive period and now after the little break we have, we have to look to build on that, starting at Carlisle.

“We have won the three games without conceding any goals, which is a positive but we have to try to do that as many times as we can.

Artell added: “We have had two defeats because we have shot ourselves in the foot and made some mistakes. We know we have to build on what we have been able to achieve over the festive period and move away from the win one, lose one run we have been on.”