David Artell says that having remote access to his players has kept them engaged on the unfinished job of going for promotion once football is safe to resume.
With the country in lock down, a return date of April 30th looks set to be extended once again when football’s governing bodies meet – but Artell says that the work for the final nine games of the season continues regardless of where those fixtures are going to be rescheduled in the 2019/20 calendar.
The Crewe Alexandra manager set a ‘scouting task’ for his squad this week where they worked remotely in groups of three to highlight the strengths and weakness of our nine remaining opponents.
Artell says the task has kept them watching football and doing productive work in the process.
The Alex boss told us: “It is important to keep the players engaged and in contact with each other and with the staff. This task has helped.
“It keeps them engaged and gives them a better understanding of the opposition we will have to play, perhaps in a short space of time.They will pick up things tactically and it gets them watching some football and studying games.
“Hopefully they will pick up some things that are transferable to when we play them. They may see a set piece or how they set-up and think they have seen that before. That is the objective of the task and it isn’t school work.
“We go through the videos as a group anyway and working with computers or tablets is part of the game now.
The boss added: “I’m sure they will learn something about what we are going to come up against and they will come up with the goods.”