Crewe Alexandra manager David Artell believes the club is in far better shape now than 12 months ago when he was in the midst of a transitional period.

The Alex boss recently celebrated two years in charge of the club after succeeding Steve Davis as manager back in January 2017.

Artell has impressively been able to convince a number of the club’s youngsters to extend their contracts with the club. On the pitch, our home form this season has been promotion form but we have been let down by our away results.

The Alex boss told crewealex.net: “We have made significant progress both on and off the pitch. We have evaluated the whole business model and have safeguarded the contracts of some of our younger players.

“We have looked at the pathway of the players coming through and I think we have a much better squad and team than this time last year. We are a better team and the only thing that has let us down has been the away form.

“If we can score more goals away from home then we would have a great chance of being somewhere where we think we should be. It has happened like that for us away from home and we need to be better with that and keep going.”