Alex' boss Steve Davis spoke to his club's official website after his side's 2-1 League One defeat against Carlisle at Brunton Park, Davis disappointed that Crewe had a goal disallowed with the score at 0-0 in the 26th minute:
“I feel the game was pretty even, we had a goal chalked off, I thought it was a great overhead kick, the referee [Andy Haines] stopped the game when I think it was Adam Dugdale who went down. We could have had a penalty, it was a push and then he stayed down and then the ball broke and Vadaine Oliver had a fantastic overhead kick into the top corner and the referee had stopped the game. So, if it is 1-0 I think at that point that gives us a huge advantage in the game because the game was very tight up to that point.
“I had prepared my speech for half-time, without playing great I thought if we come in at 0-0 we are in the game and we had done OK. Then two errors, Mark Ellis lost his man for the first one and then made a misjudgement, went across Adam’s man and tried to head that and the lad got in behind him. So, within three minutes we are 2-0 down right on half-time so I now had to change what I was going to say.
“We looked at changing the shape, we thought we would go with it for a little while and try to be a little bit more positive, which we were. I thought we had several good chances, the keeper [Ben Amos] made one or two really great saves and he came off his line a couple of times and made some saves.
“We then introduced Billy Waters, thought we would throw him on and I thought he did fine. He is the only one I have not really given an opportunity to at the moment but I felt it was the right game to do that. He slotted into the left-hand side, looked a threat, had a shot which deflected wide for a corner and linked up the play quite well. He worked hard, it was worth putting him on, having a look at him and he didn’t do himself any harm at all.”
“We just kept going, we gambled a bit and left a few little gaps which they didn’t exploit. But, like I say, their keeper made three or four good saves and Harry Davis got on the end of a header from a corner which was a positive I suppose, but that three or four minutes cost us tonight. The disallowed goal is just one of those things that goes against you sometimes, I had a look across at their coaches and their expression tells it all.
“I am sure they have probably had moments like it themselves and they are battling to get away from those situations. But, that was the disappointing thing, I thought the referee could have waited a little bit longer and we would have been celebrating a goal, and we had the header cleared off the line early on.
“Sometimes these things go for you and sometimes they don’t, it didn’t go for us tonight in that early period with those decisions. If we come in at 0-0 we are more than happy with that coming here, we rolled our sleeves up at half-time and I thought we had a go without showing real quality. But, we keep saying concentration and do the right things and make good decisions, and they haven’t done that for that three or four minutes, and that has ultimately cost us with a 2-1 defeat tonight.
“We played a little bit more football when we changed the shape, went to 4-2-3-1 and had some decent moments. We scored from the corner too late in the game to recover from it, but again a defender scores, I think Harry has got three now and is our top goalscorer so that tells its own story I think.”
“Conceding goals at bad times is what has been happening all season, players losing concentration and switching off, I said to the defenders at half-time , I couldn’t understand, particularly Mark, what decision he was trying to make and why he made that decision. I can’t understand the thinking in all honesty of why he did that and when you make those mistakes in games you get punished for it.
“I am not surprised their keeper got man of the match, a long range effort which he pushed out and a save from Vadaine when he was through and he rushed off his line. Then there was the save from Michael West from an angle, he hit it really hard into the top left-hand corner and he made a fantastic point blank save.
“We could have got a draw at the end if, they were hanging on and their manager was asking for time at the end and all the rest of it. So, we got them on the back foot certainly, but we ended up having to chase a game which there maybe could have been a 1-0 win for us if we hadn’t made those silly mistakes first-half which cost us, we might have been celebrating a win.
“When we keep saying those same things over and over again it has got to sink in. When you lose games in a succession like we have the players lose that little mentality of winning games and forget how to win games and what it takes to win games. That has just disappeared a little bit, they have got to get that back.
“We saw a massive reaction from the Port Vale game on Saturday, some of them weren’t able to keep that going tonight which I hoped they would. It was the same players, the same group of eleven players from them. They didn’t play with the same energy and they have got to, they have got to be playing at that tempo of their play and that intensity against Port Vale every week. Until we can do that we are not going to turn it round, so we have got a lot of work to do.”