David Artell says he saw the improvement he wanted to see from his side as they bounced back superbly from a Boxing Day defeat at Salford to record a deserved 3-1 win over Scunthorpe United this afternoon.

Daniel Powell scored twice and Paul Green the other, as Crewe ran out convincing winners. The only downside on the afternoon was that we didn’t score more than the three we did and the fact that we couldn’t quite manage to record that clean-sheet.

Following the 3-1 win this afternoon, the Alex boss told us: “It was a far better performance from us than Boxing Day and we did everything that is good about us. It is build on the platform of hard work, being hard to beat and playing proper football and we did that. We thoroughly deserved the three points.

“On the down side, we should have scored more. Don’t get me wrong if we score three goals every week then I would be happy but I would prefer four or five, like we should have had. We played some great football against a good Scunthorpe side, who before Boxing Day had been on a good unbeaten run over the last nine or ten games. They are hard to beat but I thought we were full value for the three points this afternoon.

“It was a quick turnaround between the games but we went through what happened at Salford to make sure it doesn’t happen again and prepared for this one.

He added: “It is a good way to end 2019. We are third with a game in hand against Macclesfield and it has given us a chance, that what it is. We have lost something like 3 in 20 games and if we do that in the second half of the season then we will be fine. We have to make sure that 2020 has to be as good as 2019. The belief is there and we have to keep churning out performances like this.”