David Artell has told the club’s official website that the large away following at Moss Rose on Saturday helped us immensely in a topsy-turvy derby. The Alex took over 1600 supporters to the home of our local neighbours and they should have been celebrating a second successive away win.

Crewe Alexandra led three times in the game and should have sown up the three points by half-time, but Macclesfield Town, to their credit, took full advantage of three mistakes to grab a point. Sol Campbell’s side showed enormous spirit to equalise for a third time in stoppage time just seconds after George Ray had seemingly won the game when he headed home from a corner.

David told the club’s official website: “I am pretty confident when I say this but I would say that every one of our players wanted to score to in front of those fans in that second half. They wanted to score.

“Having such a large following like that makes such a difference and they were terrific. It didn’t surprise me that we scored another late goal at their end, because we wanted to score in front of them and that is one of the reasons we did. That should have been the winning goal and the fans deserve credit for that.

“The atmosphere was good throughout. Yes, there were a few who got carried away at the end but 99% of our large following were absolutely terrific.

“It makes such a difference to the players when we have backing like that and I hope they do the same again tomorrow night and then at Oldham on Saturday.”