Simon Grayson: Fleetwood made wrong decisions and paid price against Crewe

Town began last night’s game encouragingly enough before falling behind in the 24th minute, when Owen Dale comfortably side-footed home past Alex Cairns.

The hosts should have levelled three minutes later but Vassell saw his spot-kick was saved by Will Jaaskelainen.

Veteran Chris Porter did convert his penalty late on to seal Crewe’s victory.

Grayson said: “Crewe took their chances and we didn’t – I think that’s a fair way to sum up the game.

“We did well in the first half and created some decent chances, but we didn’t take them and then we missed the penalty.

“Crewe had got a goal out of nothing and so you find yourselves behind at half-time.

“We’d passed the ball around well enough but in the second half we got sucked into playing the game a little bit too long, too quickly.

“We worked hard enough in that second half but we probably could still have been playing now and we wouldn’t have scored.

“We just didn’t get the breaks that you need and require to win the game.

“We made a couple of costly errors, and if you make consecutive errors like we did tonight in any game then you’re going to get punished.

“That was the difference. It’s all about what you do in both boxes and we just weren’t ruthless enough in their box tonight.

“The attitudes were good out there – I don’t think there were any lads not trying out there – we just didn’t channel it in the right direction in that second half.

“This defeat was about the decision-making really. We talk about certain things many times during the week, but though the best players in the world make the right decisions 90 per-cent of the time, we made the wrong decisions in both boxes here and that’s why we lost the game.”

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