David Artell hailed his side’s performance as they thoroughly deserved all three points from the County Ground this afternoon.
Two first half goals from Chris Porter gave us the points but that was just the half of it as referee Lee Collins and his assistants made three incorrect decisions against his side.
Firstly he disallowed a Chris Porter goal when he was onside. He then gave Swindon a soft penalty award against Ryan Wintle and then didn’t award one for Crewe for a quite obvious foul on Porter when he was through on goal! Porter was booked. The gaffer received a red card as referee Collins decided to take centre stage in the second half.
Crewe deservedly won the game though and saw the game out really well.
After the game, the Crewe boss told the club’s official website: “We deserved to win and we deserved to win despite everything that went against us. The referee in that period of the game cost us three goals. Chris deserved his hat-trick, he was onside. It wasn’t a penalty to them and then Chris was fouled for a penalty. He gets booked for diving and I get a red card. We are top of the fair play league and had six booked was it? I don’t want to talk about the referee and those decisions because I want to talk about my players, they were absolutely terrific.
“We were dominant in the first half, Tom has created both goals for Chris and we could have scored more than we did. Then from 55 minutes to the 80th minute we didn’t keep the ball as well as we did in the first half. That is the one criticism and we have to improve on that. We need to keep the ball better and be more clinical.
“I cannot be too critical because we did actually score and should have had a penalty to score another but one man didn’t think so.
“We saw the game out really well and I don’t think Will had to make too many saves to make. They were all terrific and it is a tough place to come. We do not do well historically here and they are a good side, with good players. Ritchie is a good manager and they play the right way. I am delighted. It was a brilliant win for us.”