David Artell on why he focussed on making his Crewe teams one of the fittest in our history.

David Artell has admitted to the club’s official website that it was imperative for him to ‘get some legs into his team’ after taking over from Steve Davis. It is evident that Artell and his staff have made this particular Crewe Alexandra side one of the fittest in our entire history.

The Crewe Alexandra boss was delighted in the fact that his side was never over run or out run in any of our League One matches last season. Even when we lost 6-0 at home to Oxford United, we only had ourselves to blame for some of the goals we conceded on the day.

He told crewealex.net: “We have our bench mark when it comes to the fitness and conditioning of the players and there is no point having technical and tactically astute players if they cannot run. You cannot be physically poor in any league and I don’t think anyone was stronger than us physically.

“I don’t think we got over run or out run by anyone and that is credit to Liam and that will be down to Tom this year. That is down to the work the staff and the players do.

“It is to make sure that they can play for 90 plus minutes and make the right calls and decisions when they are fatigued.

“It is important to have legs in the team and that is one of the things I was focussed on when I got the job. It is important.

“You only have to see Kyle Walker playing for England. He has got legs and an 33c engine built it there somewhere as well!

“It is imperative to have that in your team and we have got players who can put a real shift in.”