Dave Richards is hoping that the Crewe Alexandra dressing room can build on our mid-week victory over Wigan Athletic in the Papa Johns’ Trophy and take that into our League One form.

Crewe have constructed a mini little run of one defeat in eight games, but have only had the three victories during that period too against Burton Albion in the league and Wigan and Shrewsbury in the Football League Trophy.

Richards crucially saved a penalty at 1-0 against the Latics and only enhanced his chances of a recall in his battle to claim the number one shirt. The Welshman says that with everyone fighting for 11 shirts, it is driving everyone to improve.

Richards told the club’s official website: “We don’t want it to take too long for us to gel as a team. We clicked the first half against Cambridge and then it fell away in the second half but we will learn from that.

“Hopefully, we can build on the result against Wigan. Although they made changes like we did, they still had a lot of very good players out there and yet we could have won even more comfortably than we did on the night.

“We are hoping that can build a base for us and as squad we can take that on and start to get higher in the league.

“It was good to bounce back and now we have to take it into the Fleetwood game.  Everyone wants to play and everyone wants a shirt, so that just drives you on to do well and train well.

The goalkeeper concluded: “The dressing room is still bubbly and is still confident and we are sure that we have enough ability here to start moving up the table again.”