Interim boss says silence in the dressing room afterwards was different after his side gave everything against one of the top sides in the division.
Alex Morris says that the way his Crewe Alexandra side adapted to the demands of facing an in-form Sheffield Wednesday side in front of an expectant home crowd. After riding some luck at times in the early exchanges, Crewe held in the game and were only undone by a penalty award just before the hour mark. Scott Kashket was rightly penalised for a trip on Mendez-Laing and Lee Gregory kept his cool to put Dave Richards the wrong way from the spot.
Crewe’s hard work kept it to 1-0 and although that real genuine chance didn’t fall to us in the later stages, there were still plenty of positives to take from the performance in terms of the team framework and taking on instructions.
After the 1-0 defeat, the Interim boss told us: “I thought the players competed terrifically well throughout the game and that first 15 minutes was a real whirlwind. They threw everything at us and we had a lot of luck during that period with the ball dropping in the box and them missing some gilt edge chances they had.
“The intensity was too much for us at times and we quickly changed to three at the back and went wing-back to wing-back and it levelled it out a bit and we gained some control without quite passing the ball well enough to create chances. If you pass the ball well then it takes some of the pressure off because when you have the ball they can’t hurt you. That was the disappointing thing but I thought we also defended our box well because no team puts more crosses into the box than Sheffield Wednesday. We responded to all the challenges that were thrown at them and adapted to it and I was really pleased by that.
He added: “We know Sheffield Wednesday are a very good side and their crowd made a lot of noise. That has to the marker for them to try and get back to this level and play in stadiums like these again. That has to be a motivation going into next season and there were positives we can take into Saturday against Ipswich. I will never accept a defeat, never but there were plenty of things to be pleased with.”