Crewe Alexandra
V
Accrington Stanley
Prediction League – Game 29; v Crewe Alex (away)
They’re a real enigma, are Crewe; the 7 games they played up to and including the 3-2 defeat at Fortress Crown yielded them just 4 points; at home, one win (2-1 against Bradford), one draw (1-1 against Gillingham) and one loss (1-0 to Stevenage), and four defeats on the road – 3-2 at our place, 3-1 at Rotherham, 6-2 at Northampton and 3-2 at Aldershot; scored 10, conceded 18. They haven’t won any of their last 3 away games either – defeats by 3-1 at Bury, 1-0 at Macc and 2-1 at Oxford on Saturday last – making it 7 consecutive away losses; at home, though, they’ve won their last three – 4-1 over Burton, 1-0 over playoff-chasing Southend, and 2-0 over Chesterfield (don’t forget 5-5 earlier in the season against the League leaders either), and in total, 7 of their last 9. Can you go up winning at home and losing away? Probably not, but we’ll see.
Their home record is P18 W10 D4 L4 F36 A15; fairly scary; overall it’s P37 W14 D9 L14 F68 A56 for 51 points and 12th – 1 point and one place behind us, with two games more played; after last season’s 5-3 and 5-1 games, we had just the 5 goals at our place on Feb 22nd –
Charlie Barnett on 12,
Ian Craney on 47 and
Sean “Golden Boots” McConville on 75 giving us the points.
Despite “68 for” (plus 7 more in their 5 various cup games) they don’t score by the hatful every time; blank sheet 5 times, one goal 17 times, 2 in a game on ten occasions, and ten times they’ve hit 3 or more – 6 occasions scoring 3, 4-1 v Burton, 4-2 against Macc in the JPT, 5-5 against Chesterfield and 7-0 over Barnet early on; they also got a 6-2 smacking at Northampton
; worth noting, though, that they’ve only got more than 2 goals twice in their last 18 ……..
Their leading scorers (the good ones tend to hunt in pairs) are 6’ 1” Yorkshire-born
Clayton Donaldson – who made his debut with Hull and joined Crewe in 2008 from Hibernian - who currently has 20; Crewe Academy graduate
Shaun Miller – who’s 24, and who’s been at Crewe for 17 years, has 15; two other Academy graduates (striker
Byron Moore and midfielder
Ashley Westwood) have 6 and 5 respectively, and ex Rotherham, Shrews, Mansfield, Chester and Morecambe defender
David Artell has 5 as well (he hit 8 in season 09-10 for the Shrimps); two other players have 4 each, two have 3, one has 2 and four have a singleton each
The deadline for entries is, as ever, scheduled kick-off time, which is 7.45pm on Tuesday 22nd March. We’ve already got one guess for 8-2, and Wynonie hasn’t gone yet!
Real crunch time, this; win this and the dream is surely on …….
Will we? By what score if we do? Or are we back to 0-0? Who knows? Guesses (new, old or changed) as soon as you like, if you please ….
Good luck to everyone ………… and thanks for playing!