Crewe 'not miles off' where boss Bell wants them

Lee Bell has been in charge of Crewe since November 2022

Crewe Alexandra are "not miles off" where they need to be in League Two says boss Lee Bell.

Ahead of Saturday's home game against sixth-placed Chesterfield, the Alex know a win would take them into the play-off places and might be enough to make the top three.

Crewe's well-earned point at Oldham in their last game extended their unbeaten run to three matches and took their points tally to 13 from the last possible 21.

In the seven games before that, they only won seven points and suffered four defeats in five matches.

"I don't think we've ever been miles off," Bell told BBC Radio Stoke.

"We have a meeting every eight games and statistically, if you take MK Dons out of it [a 3-1 defeat] in the last seven we're doing well.

"We're right up there and we have to look at the bigger picture.

"We don't like losing games and in that run of seven games there were some losses in there.

"But we're quite calm in what we're doing and we're generally pleased with what the group's producing."

Crewe have hit the woodwork 10 times in the league this season, including twice against Oldham and Bell says he does not see that as a negative.

"You can look at it how you want - you can say you should do better but we're talking inches," he said.

"They're not hitting the outside of the post, they're hitting the inside and it's going across the goal line but it does highlight what we do during the week, we do a lot of work around scoring goals and giving players the freedom to get shots away.

"We want to be an attacking team."

With the league table so congested with only five points separating the top 10 sides and only three points between 18th-placed Accrington Stanley and next-to-bottom Cheltenham Town, Bell says a lot of the fixtures at the moment are very interesting.

"You go down the league to 15th or 16th they're all tasty games," he said.

"They're all going to be playing somebody who's going to affect somebody else.

"The teams in and around the bottom four or five are now finding their feet and when they play each other they're all tasty too.

"The play-off places are not 15 points away and no-one's cut adrift at the bottom so the results on Saturday will all affect where we finish at five o'clock."