David Artell and his staff shook things up with their system on Tuesday evening and it paid dividends as Crewe Alexandra deservedly defeated an in-from Accrington Stanley thanks to goals from Omar Beckles and the recalled Chris Porter.

Artell says his players can adjust to various systems if needs be having worked on them over the last few weeks when we have been without a mid-week fixture.

The Alex boss reverted to a flexible 4-4-2 to beat Accrington but he has suggested that he may look to alter things again for the visit of Sunderland this weekend.

The Crewe boss told us: “Sometimes you have to really respect the opposition and take into account what they want to do and try and prevent it. We worked on that for Accrington and we will do the same for Sunderland this weekend.

“I thought on Tuesday night that we were the ones doing the probing and had the better idea on how to score goals. We created a number of chances and should have scored more than the two we did.

“The first goal came from an unusual source (Omar Beckles) but it still involved getting the ball into the box and putting them under pressure. We asked the questions and looked more dangerous.

“Of course, the sending off helped with that in the second half and there were a few more gaps but I thought that our front two looked more dangerous than theirs all night and Ports has made a career out of scoring goals like that after Tom put it on a plate for him.”