Brighton Player Ratings
Richard Walker 5: An unimpressive display from Walker. Won some good headers at times but more often than not looked uncomfortable. Walker looked more like the Walker of old than the Walker who impressed at Norwich and Burnley.
Adie Moses 6.5: A decent performance from the centre back but he was certainly not as impressive as in his last two outings. The fact that Moses' ordinary performance was one of the better performances of all of our players yesterday highlighted just how poor the overall performance was.
Anthony Tonkin 5: A poor performance. Tonks did not get forward effectively at any point in the game and his defensive naivities were often highlighted. A shoddy display from the full back was no more obvious than when the tiny Leon Knight outjumped 'Tony Tonkin' to get a header in on goal.
Billy Jones 5.5: An average performance from Billy. Billy didn't use the ball well when in possession and didn't break up the play or disrupt the opposition's rhythm as well as he has done previously.
David Vaughan 4.5: Crewe's most disappointing player on the day. Vaughany frustrated the Alex faithful who were always expectant when he got the ball. Unusually for the Welsh International, Vaughan didn't look like he wanted the ball and when he did get it he seemed reluctant to run at people and often passed the ball straight out of touch or to a Brighton player. He looked out of sorts but wasn't helped by the poor performances from the forwards.
Kenny Lunt 5: Lunty looked like a player who hadn't quite recovered from an illness. Lunt made very few tackles and went AWOL when Brighton had the ball reducing our midfield presence yet further. 'King Kenny' did redeem himself slightly by producing an excellent pass to pick out Michael 'The Don' Higdon for Crewe's undeserved second.
Steve Jones 3: Jonah again put forward his case to be dropped with a performance where he did absolutely nothing. Jonah's only slight contribution to the game was to not shoot when put clean through on goal. Many Crewe fans were left thinking that Nicky Maynard or a fit Luke Rodgers, or even Juan Ugarte, could do a better job than this season's Steve Jones who has done very little in 270 minutes of football.
Eddie Johnson 4.5: EJ didn't win enough of the balls played up to him and as a result Brighton were all too often gifted possession. Johnson's movement was also poor as was the movement of the rest of the strikers.
Luke Varney 5: Started off brightly but faded into the mediocrity of the environment and the team display.
Subs:
Mark Rivers 7: Rivo came on and made a real difference. Not only did he score an impressive diving header but his link up play was good encouraging better forward play and a more patient team approach.
Michael Higdon 7: The Don scored with an accurate header to put the Alex 2-1 ahead. Whilst he didn't do a great deal else, a goal was all that could be asked of him in the time afforded to him.
Gary Roberts 7: Roberts made a big difference in the midfield. Roberts replaced Billy Jones in the holding midfield role and his presence was certainly noticable. Crewe had previously lacked midfield bite and Roberts was willing to grab the game by the scruff of the neck and play the ball on the deck. Roberts marshalled to midfield to great effect and reminded Crewe fans why they had been calling for him to take Kenny Lunt's place in the side.
Man of the Match: Gary Roberts (who played for about 15 minutes)