There can be few greater footballing heroes than Dario Gradi. A man who has loyally managed Crew Alexandria for over 20 years. You arrive in Crewe and walk around the place and it hardly seems the size to keep a football side going, never mind one that has managed successfully to hold on to a second league place. But Dario has done it with Crewe – even managing to get them to bounce straight back when they dropped down a league a couple of seasons ago. Crewe are the sort of club that that pleasant chap Roman Ibramovich probably doesn’t even knows exists and Fat Freddy Shepherd thinks shouldn’t be allowed to exist. Yet ask a real footballer supporter who they’d most want to spend an hour or so discussing football with out of Gradi, the pleasant one and the brothel creeper and not one would need to hesitate for a second.
We got into Crew early and got ourselves parked in Clancy’s bar in the Royal Hotel almost directly opposite the away end. The group next to us were Norwegians. One, who was a Sunderland supporter, took our photo with his mobile to send to his son to prove he was at the match. Personally I think it only proved he was in an Irish bar with some people in SAFC shirts but I don’t really understand Norwegian culture so I didn’t argue. The Arsenal-Bolton game was on but the big screen was in front of the dance floor with strobe lights going and fairy lights strung out between the projector and the screen. It made one feel as one had been on some strange substance before hitting the black stuff.
The team cam through late giving us more than usual time to speculate. Bridges kept his place (hooray I thought at the time, boo I thought later) as had Thornton. With Wright back at RB, we had an extraordinarily attacking bench of Elliott, Brown, Arca and Lawrence. SAFC had been allocated the stand at the side and the small stand behind the goal (towards which we attacked in the first half). We were in the aide stand at row C, about fifteen yards in from the half way line towards the small SAFC stand. You are so close to the pitch you almost feel you are taking part in the game. It certainly alters your view of individual’s performances.
Crewe had been murdered in their last couple of games. But a manager like Gradi really knows how to organise a team. I was impressed by Crewe throughout. They clearly don’t have a lot of talent (or at least the players on show didn’t) but they were well organised, closed us down and generally made life difficult. We haven’t had too many champagne performances this season and this was fairly flat even by those standards. But these are the games that determine whether you go up or stay down. Last season we didn’t fail to snatch a top two spot because of our performance against Norwich or West Brom – we just didn’t grind out enough of these results.
The first half was fairly uneventful. I thought we should have had a penalty when Stew was brought down but I’ve since seen it on telly and I’m not so sure. There were two big disappointments. First Thornton – he’s not a left winger by any stretch of the imagination so it is tough on him playing there but even allowing for that he was ineffective. He probably should have been playing right in front of us but often I had to search the pitch to find out where he was. He went off early in the second half and will be very disappointed with himself. Second Bridges. Opinions differ about his performance at Burnley but I thought he was canny (although he tired in the second half). However at Crewe he was very poor indeed. He just never seemed to know what to do with the ball. We want Stickman to succeed so much it hurts but this will have done his chances no good whatsoever.
The real turning point came early in the second half when Bridges went off for Elliott and Thornton went off for Acra. Elliott, on a couple of minutes before Arca, had already had a run into the box and shot that was probably the game’s most exciting moment when he picked up the ball in the middle of the park and fed it out left to Arca for his first touch. I’ve never really thought of Arca as very quick. It’s not that he’s slow, you just never think of pace as one of his strongest points. But when he got the ball he took off like the wind. I hope he’d warmed up effectively as he could easily have pulled a muscle bursting straight into life like that. He got into the box but was at a narrow angle. He opted to shoot and put enough power on it that the goalkeeper could only deflect it (credit also to Stew for getting in there to make it difficult for the goaly). The ball hit the inside of the far post and the gods of happy bouncing balls smiled on us to make it come out to Elliott (who had rushed forward after making the pass). Elliott still had a lot to do but he took it first time, controlling it enough to stop it skying over but with enough pace that the defender couldn’t reach over and block it. An excellent goal to win a match.
In theory what happens next is that Crewe have to come at us to try to equalise so we get chances to break forward and make the score more convincing. Bliddy theory. Crewe did press but we didn’t really get a lot more chances (we had a goal disallowed for offside but it was down the other end so I’m not sure how offside or not it was). Worryingly Crew had a couple of free kicks near the end that made life very jittery. But we held on, thanks to one good save from Myrhe and some pretty solid defensive work by the back four and Whitely. All of the team, bar the two I’ve discussed, can be pretty pleased with their collective contribution. However, I have to give a special mention to Stew. Yet again he was quite simply class. Holding the ball up well, laying it off sensibly, getting in good positions, even tracking back to defend when needed. He really has come into his own this last couple of months.
With Wigan and Ipswich both winning, the tension remains at unbearable levels. I’m sure Mick Mac will keep complacency at bay so I, as a supporter, am going to go for a bit of arrogance in saying we have two winnable home games this week. Get six points from them and suddenly that difficult April is not going to look so difficult after all.