Andy Munro watches Blues’ festive win at Crawley Town.
Despite the timing, this was a match more dour than festive and the first half in particular was a 45 minutes to forget. A battling Crawley side closed Blues down well but thankfully had limited or no effect in the final third. Perhaps the only bright points for Blues were some decent overlapping from Buchanan and another stellar defensive display from Ben Davies.
One guesses that the Blues manager Chris Davies gave his team a bit of a dressing down (no doubt in his usual measured way) and this seemed to have the desired effect as the players came out with far more intent. The architect behind much of their improvement was yet again unsung hero Keshi Anderson and it was from one of his forays that his centre was met by that man Jay Stansfield to put Blues into a lead that they never looked like relinquishing.
The oft-criticised Ethan Laird came on and played well, laying on a simple chance for Lyndon Dykes which should have been a simple tap in but somehow evaded the Scot.
On the subject of the forward line, Alfie May ran around in ever decreasing circles and the conundrum of how to maximise the effect of Stansfield and May at the same time has yet to be solved.