Stripmining

Crewe 1 Shrewsbury 2

Following defeat in the local derby against Port Vale, Crewe had a chance to show some bouncebackability at home to Shrewsbury. Sadly, that all went titsup after about five minutes when a mix up between defender Ada and goalkeeper Taylor led to Ada poking the ball past the keeper to give Matt Wright a simple tap-in at the far post and put the Shrews one up. That took the wind right out of Crewe's sails and they struggled to make an impact on the game for much of the first half. Indeed they were lucky not to fall further behind when Shrewsbury struck the post and then the bar in quick succession. Gradually Crewe got a foothold in the game but with Donaldson failing to hold the ball up front (mainly due to Geoghegan persistently fouling him, in my opinion) the play was disjointed and tended to break down once the ball was played forward.  It was notable, however, that Shrewsbury were quite happy to play for time and seemed to be settling for the one nil win well before half time. 
In the second half Crewe changed their system a little and started to get a foothold in the game. and even managed to level the game fairly quickly. Donaldson lost the ball out wide on the left but Miller came bustling in to win it back. Miller's tidy pass sent Donaldson into the are and he held the ball up for the supporting Miller to run onto and slide past the goalkeeper. After that Crewe were pretty much in charge of the game.  However, for all their good work and positive play, they were creating little in front of goal. Donaldson was struggling against the man-mountain Geoghegan and Miller's first touch let him down far too often. The midfield were still being out-muscled and Shrews posed a threat on the counter-attack. A threat fully realised when Ada tripped Robinson in the area to give Shrewsbury a penalty. Luckily for Ada, Taylor got both hands to Robinson's poor spot-kick and Blanchett completed the clearance to keep the scores level. Having survived that scare, both Donaldson and Moore should have done better when given shooting chances. And then, in a crucial turning point, Donaldson beat the offside trap and was through, albeit out wide on the right. Shrewsbury keeper Neal rushed out to try to avert the danger and Donaldson went down under his challenge. To be fair, I thought Donaldson went down a little easily and as the foul was wide and outside the box it could be argued it wasn't a goal-scoring opportunity, but I was still disappointed to see the referee only produce a yellow card. Insult followed injury, so to speak, as Crewe wasted the resulting free-kick.
As the game drifted towards a draw Crewe were caught on the counter-attack but Taylor easily gathered Leslie's weak shot. Sadly, Crewe didn't take notice of that warning and in the 93rd minute were again caught with too many players upfield leaving Shrewsbury with three strikers against our three attackers. Wright, the man with the ball, didn't need his companions as he turned Artell easily and then placed a shot past Taylor from the edge of the area to give the Shrews the win.
There wasn't time for Crewe to respond and so they fell to a second defeat in four days. As with Port Vale, I don't think they deserved that, but if you give daft goals away, I guess you're always going to struggle. Hopefully this is just a blip and they can get back on another unbeaten run, but I'm certainly a lot less confident going in to Saturday's FA Cup game at Tamworth. After that, there are some more tough games to come this month and it could make or break our season. But let's get the FA Cup game out of the way first....