Kenny Lunt expressed his delight following Crewe Alexandra’s narrow 1-0 win over Newcastle United’s Under-21s last night. Lunt was pleased with the three points and the clean-sheet but was critical of our inability to kill off our opponents in the first half.

Crewe conjured up a plethora of opportunities in a dominant first 45 minutes but we went in at the break still goalless.

It took a rather bizarre free-kick from substitute Harry Pickering to decide the Group game, with his effort evading everyone to drop in on 65 minutes.

After the game, Lunt said: “It was nice to win the game and hopefully that will mean we will progress in the competition.

“Overall, we were very good in the first half but were guilty of not taking our chances again. We were not ruthless and clinical enough and it really should have been three or four at half-time.

“We faded a bit second half and had a few people playing games for the first time and the tempo dropped. But we came through and there were things we learned from the performance.

“It was a good test against some very good young players from Newcastle and we have won the game which was the most important thing.”