Artell on improvement at the back after season openers.

David Artell has told crewealex.net that the players deserve great credit for the improvement shown in our defending. The Railwaymen have faced a number of difficult fixtures as an reintroduction to life in League One and after conceding two goals against Charlton Athletic in our opening league game, the Alex have tightened up and have only conceded six goals from our opening seven games.

The Alex boss says: “We have conceded six goals from our seven games and that has made a real difference for us. We have worked hard on that and our defensive shape has improved. The boys deserve great credit.

“We had to tweak a couple of things from our opening two games against Charlton and Lincoln (in the League Cup)  and the players took things on board and improved from it. They are coachable here and want to learn and get better.

“It was the same on Saturday at Doncaster. I think we limited them to a couple of others chances and a couple of half chances. They had one flash across the box, the forward has shot over from 20 yards and there was the late header, which Will did fantastically well to save, so we got the three points instead of one.

“Other than that I didn’t think they had a lot of chances and we had a number at the other end of the pitch.

“So to go there and match them for chances and to win the game is not a bad barometer for us. We have 11 lads on the pitch giving their all and then the subs and then the others pushing them on by training well.

“They are all grafting and working their socks off and have become hard to beat. When you mix that with some skill and talent, like we have got, then we will win some football games.”