David Artell could not hide his disappointment as his Crewe Alexandra side suffered back-to-back home defeats to Northampton this afternoon. Keith Curle’s side deservedly claimed the three points after first half goals from Daniel Powell and John-Joe O’Toole left Crewe will some scoreline to overcome in the second 45 minutes.

We had four chances over the course of the game that could have changed the game but we drew a blank at home with Bowery, Miller, Ainley and Porter all having good openings.

After the game, Artell told the club’s official website: “Their physicality was better than our physicality today and that was the big difference. I thought we helped them with the way we were. We didn’t have the aggressive mind-set to make sure that was our ball or if we had it that we weren’t be giving it away. We didn’t have that real intent in that first half.

“Saying that we had the best chance of the first half with Jordan’s chance and had a few good ones late on in the second half but for me that was a little bit late.

“We didn’t put our bodies on the line and throw ourselves into blocks. When those crosses went into the box, we weren’t in the mind-set box that we were going to make sure it wasn’t going to end up in our net. The players knew what to expect because we had gone through all through the week. We knew they would be a threat from set plays and corners and they have scored from both.

He added: “We had more of a go in the second half but the chances we had came late on. It was little too late from us and if Chris’s late effort goes in then we had eight or nine minutes to maybe have got something but that is to take nothing away from Northampton because they deserved to win but we were disappointing.”