Crewe Alexandra boss David Artell says that although we suffered that heart breaking late defeat to Exeter City, the overall performance against Paul Tisdale’s side only injected some confidence and belief into the squad.
The Alex should have got something from the game when Shaun Miller gave us the lead on 88 minutes, but following what Artell called a ‘mad five minutes’, we were left with nothing to show for our efforts.
Artell believes though that the solid performance against one of the best side’s in the division inspired us to produce the performance we did at Lincoln City just a few days later. Crewe ran out comfortable 4-1 winners at Sincil Bank and Artell firmly believed that level of performance was coming.
The Crewe boss explained to crewealex.net: “I really thought a performance like the Lincoln one was coming from us. I told people in the office that someone was going to be on the receiving end of a performance like that. I felt it was coming from us.
“It has been a while coming but I think we look a lot better now than we did six games ago.
“Although we lost the Exeter game after a mad last five minutes from us, we played well.
“I think Exeter have been the best side we have played over two games so far and we should have beaten them. That is what I told the players afterwards. We have to have that belief.
“When you play as well as we did against Exeter and only the last five minutes have cost us then it actually does wonders for the confidence. It was unforgiveable not to have won that game but the players showed that they can compete with the best in the league.
“Now if we had played terribly and lost 5-0 then we know we have big problems. Losing in injury time like we did showed that we were not far off and we were able to take that belief into the Lincoln game.
“I wasn’t surprised with our performance and result at Lincoln because we have been playing a lot better of late.”