On the face of it, this was really easy.
But that’s not strictly true, as what came out of this game, from what I saw/heard is that we played very open and quite simply took our chances.
Whereas Crewe possibly had more chances, but quite simply, didn’t take them.
No doubt one of of the stat sites will back me up or tell me I’m wrong, but that’s how it seemed.
It was very much a case of Dean Smith’s “you score 3, we’ll score 4” attitude, but it made the game somewhat misleading, in my opinion.
Which is all good when you’re playing lower level opposition, such as Crewe.
The worrying part, is that Crewe created a boatload of chances and a better quality side would probably have outscored us.
The fact that their solitary goal was scored by a player running past 4 defenders is worrying.
But not quite so worrying that we need to be concerned.
We’d taken such an early 2-0 lead, that the game seemed beyond Crewe and they never proved a real test.
For them, it was more a test of their defence and for us, it was more a test of the attacking side to our game.
Which is where we came out well, having proved very clinical, while Crewe wasted chances galore.
I’m not convinced we learned much from this game, but scoring six goals will surely add to the side’s confidence.
It was nice that Hourihane got two too, but I just get the impression that we have players who can easily cut it at the sort of level played tonight.
It’s whether they can demonstrate it in the Premier league.
Don’t get me wrong.
I’m not knocking tonight’s score in any way.
We whupped Crewe and that might have been a very tricky prospect, just a couple of seasons ago.
But we need to show even more if we’re to do well in the Prem.
Dean Smith will have seen plenty to moan about tonight.
Which is exactly how a Premier league side should be thinking.
We’ll have learned from this and will improve even more.
I’m quite confident of that.
