Lee Bell demands attacking prowess from Crewe

Lee Bell admitted he was disappointed not to have seen any attacking prowess from his players in Crewe’s 2-0 defeat at Stockport.

The Alex failed to muster a shot on target in their Boxing Day loss and Bell is calling for his men to show their true ability and some creativity.

“When you go for 98 minutes without a shot on goal and don’t create anything, one goal would have been enough for them,” said Bell.

“I thought we started the game really well, starts don’t mean anything though, it’s how you finish that matters.

“We’re depleted in numbers and a lot of the players out there have been off ill but I won’t be making excuses for them because we’ve put them out there in a position to play today.

“There was no creativity, no movement, and too many players playing on their own. We’ve got to address it and address it quickly.

“You can have good individuals but the best teams are teams who play together, work off each other. There were a lot of moments, particularly after the first goal, when they went on their own and we’ve got to be miles better than that.

“We didn’t create anything and in reality we could have been one or two goals down at half-time, with the chances they had.

“At Stockport you’re going to be under the cosh and if you’re going to be under the cosh you’ve got to do something at the other end and we were miles off.

“We’ve got to start creating some chances, they’ve got to take the shackles off. There’s some ability in that changing room and they’ve got to show more than that.”

In their first game in nearly three weeks, County collected the points thanks to second-half goals by Paddy Madden and Will Collar.

And boss Dave Challinor pointed to his team’s improvement after half-time as their key to a comprehensive victory.

“I’m really pleased with the second-half performance,” he said. “I think you can always look for excuses and in the first half we looked like a team that hadn’t played for a while but thankfully it hasn’t cost us.

“We’ve set the standards in terms of our performance, which is really high and when you drop below that there’s going to be some criticism. From minute one in the second half we were much, much better though. And we got the goals to win us the game.

“It’s important that you have matchwinners in your team and we have that, we know we’re a real threat from set-pieces with our delivery and our height at certain junctures and we scored from one of those, which certainly helped.

“In the first half we were well below our standards but had some really good opportunities that we missed.

“If we’d scored that first goal it would have settled us down and settled the crowd down a little bit and we’d maybe have gone on from there. But we didn’t and in the second half we had to go out and perform and with the goalscorers we have in the team we have goals from different areas which certainly helps and it’s helped out today.”