Boss feels his side possibly deserved a bit more after encouraging display against Charlton.

David Artell felt that his Crewe Alexandra side deserved more than the 2-0 defeat that Charlton Athletic inflicted on the first day of the league season.

Crewe were beaten by two first half goals from Alfie Doughty and Conor Washington but had chances of our own to perhaps make more of a game of it in the second half. The closest we came to halving the deficit saw new summer signing Mikael Mandron strike the crossbar in the final 10 minutes as we pressed for that goal to unsettle the Londoners more in the final stages.

After the defeat, Artell told crewealex.net: “Once again it shows that you have to take your chances, especially at this level. If you don’t take your chances then you don’t win games of football.

“I didn’t think we deserved to lose the game but the performance was okay. It was acceptable and we can take positives from it but we have to be better in both boxes. We can take some heart and comfort from the way we played.

“We were disappointed with the goals we conceded. One was from a counter attack when we were in the ascendency and the second goal was when we lost two headers close to our box. It was a poor goal for us to concede.

“I want us to be an attacking side and we cannot defend like we defended for their counter-attacking goal.

“We were in the ascendency for much of the second half but we couldn’t find that goal that could have made things interesting. We hit the bar, and the goalkeeper made a good save from Mikael’s header.  We got into some great positions but we didn’t quite do enough. The performance gives us heart against a good side with good players.

“I don’t think it was a 2-0 game and Charlton made sure they weren’t going to get beat. They are a good side but I felt we deserved a bit more than a 2-0 defeat. I’m not sure they would say they were in control of the game.

He added: “We have got to be better and we will learn from it and move on to the next one. We won’t take the result but we will take the performance.”