That will Crewe nicely for Salford as they halt run
SALFORD CITY CREWE 3 1
SALFORD City claimed their first league victory since the beginning of November and claimed a notable scalp too with victory over League Two highfliers Crewe at the Peninsula Stadium
The Ammies raced into a 2-0 lead by the 12th minute through a Richie Towell strike and Brandon Thomas-Asante’s first Football League goal.
The opening goal came in the eighth minute as Towell’s powerful strike from the lefthand side of the penalty area D found the bottom corner.
Thomas-Asante then doubled the Ammies’ lead just four minutes later.
The 20-year-old robbed a Crewe defender of the ball 25 yards out from goal before racing through and finding himself one-on-one with the goalkeeper and placing it low to his right.
Despite recent results, Ammies boss Graham Alexander felt this display was coming.
He said: “Performances over the last few games have been as good as that without the clinical edge in front of goal.
“To get those two goals quite early in the game gave us a lot of confidence and made it difficult for Crewe and we felt reasonably comfortable in the first half.” Salford tried to dig in, with keeper Chris Neal and Ibou Touray even receiving yellow cards for time-wasting in the first half.
However, the last 25 minutes saw the Alex come alive forcing Neal, who had a quiet afternoon up until that point, into three strong saves in quick succession.
The Railwaymen found the net in the 81st minute via Harry Pickering’s thunderous 20-yard shot Neal could only watch fly into the bottom right corner. Just as the Cheshire outfit thought they had found a way back in, two minutes later Salford restored their two-goal advantage through a Ryan Wintle own goal.
A Ryan Conway shot struck the midfielder and rolled into the net ensuring the Ammies inflicted only Crewe’s third away defeat of the season.
Alexander said: “It looked really nervy those last 10 minutes or so but to go up the other end and score I think it just gave us that two goal cushion and we saw the game out from there.”