Crewe Alexandra boss David Artell believes that we will only know if missing out on playing Saturday’s Cheshire derby against Macclesfield Town was beneficial or not to our preparations for our FA Cup tie this evening by the overall outcome.

Crewe’s weekend league fixture against Macc was cancelled on Friday due to their players’ strike action and it left everyone extremely disappointed, especially after the number of travelling support we were going to take to the Moss Rose.

Ahead of tonight’s Second Round replay, Artell told crewealex.net: “I don’t know what affect not having a game on Saturday will make.

“If we win, people will say we benefitted from the break. If we lose it will be the opposite. It can work either way.

“On one hand, the players have had a little rest but on the other they have trained for a lot of days without a game and they had nothing to stimulate them at the weekend. Does that make them lethargic and take them a bit of time to get back into it? We will have to see, it is what it is. 

“You can make of that what you will and I’m sure people will come to their own conclusions after the result.

“I know that we wanted to play the game on Saturday and that was totally out of our hands.”