Ryan Wintle was excellent for Crewe and kept the ball all night long in the holding role.
The difference was, you can’t press high with Andy Cook as a striker. For the first fifteen minutes, Knowles and Dapo played just behind Cook. All the Crewe defenders had to go was move it from side to side and pop into Wintle and they were out. Eventually Glover told Knowles to push up and Dapo to sit on Wintle and then we started causing more problems.
On the other side, we are insistent on trying to play from the back, without and clear plan of how to beat the press. The defenders aren’t very good on the ball, Shaughnessy aside, the midfielders don’t show for the ball, so the defenders end up having to play in the channels which Cook can’t chase and Knowles wasn’t strong enough to hold it. When you have Cook up top, you have to get it up to him instead of playing from the back with no plan. This is one of my main problems with Dempster, I don’t think he works on phases of play. It seems he just picks eleven players on and expects them to work it out for themselves.