David Artell has told the club’s official website that he believes that his squad have the foundations in place to kick on and challenge for a play-off place this season. With one game still to play, Crewe Alexandra find themselves just short of a top seven finish this time around but the boss says that ‘we have no-one else to blame than ourselves’.

The Alex boss has stated this week that he is headed to Blundell Park at the weekend tinged with disappointment that we haven’t quite been able to establish ourselves in the final play-off spot.

David told us: “I think there is a foundation there. We will have to add to it but I think the squad is a developing one and will only get better with another year of experience.

“At the beginning of the year we set ourselves the target of challenging for a play-off spot and we have underachieved on that. There is no one to blame apart from ourselves because we have dropped too many points when we shouldn’t have.

“We tried to make the play-offs but we have fallen short and now we have to look forward. We will have to make sure that we are better than the teams coming down and the teams coming up. We know that there are some good teams already in the division but we also know what we have to do be successful.

“The players know that we have to be more consistent over the season. “