Boss gives us his verdict after Valley defeat

David Artell was disappointed with his sides decision-making after we suffered our fourth successive league defeat at Charlton. The Alex weathered a period of early pressure from the home side to grow into the game but two quick fire goals in a six-minute spell in the first half gave Crewe a mountain to climb.

The Alex raised the performance in the second half and had a number of chances to possibly get back into the contest but found Craig MacGillivray in fine form in the Charlton goal.

Following the 2-0 defeat, Artell told the club’s official website: “Charlton made the better start and we found it difficult to get going but once we did, our decision making was poor. It doesn’t matter where you play but if you don’t make good decisions at both ends of the pitch then it makes it difficult, never mind when you come to Charlton.

“Our decision making let us down and in my opinion it has cost us the game. When you make poor decisions in the final third and then defensively then you end up getting punished and that is what happened today.

“Early on after being placed under pressure, we were trying to play out. We need to be more effective, get up the pitch and get onto the ball in their half of the pitch. It took us too long to do that and then we have really given them two goals in a short period of time.

“I lost count the amount of times that our decision making in their final third led to a counter-attack in behind us. You have to also credit Charlton with taking that advantage but we have to make smarter decisions. They punished us for it.

“I thought Murph and Josh were good in what they were doing and what they were trying, but we have a few of them not playing to the standard and we have high standards. It is a question of them working a bit harder and certainly a bit smarter.

“We have to the earn the right to play our football and we didn’t do that enough in the first half. The performance was better overall than last week and we are improving. We are getting better.

"We made their goalkeeper make some saves but we still have to improve and there is a lot of work to be done.

“We are a few players short and that is something we will look to address over the next few days and beyond the window with free agents. We have 19 fit players with us and that is what we are working with at the moment. “