The young 16 year old defender & midfielder Billy Jones has hit the scene harder than Dean Ashton did 2 years ago. Billy started his his 7th match in under two months, including the FA Youth Cup game earlier in the month. Billy though was yet to score on the first team scene and after equaling the score against Wigan, 1-1, 60 seconds after the Latics scored - you'd be pushed to find a better first career goal for any player any where.
Billy hit it on the first time volley from 25 yards, after a Kenny Lunt corner. THe ball flew in off the crossbar leaving the keeper with absolutely no chance. Billy's goal wasn't his only contribution. He was by far the man of the match, best player on the pitch by a mile. He went forward and hit every cross with threat and when defending, Nathan Ellington, who Wigan paid £1.2million for, didn't get a sniff.
The volley was something Dario tried to get Billy to work but admitted that in training this week, it didn't go too well:
"It's one I have seen on TV somewhere and we've been practising it, but Billy has gone absolutely no-where near to finding the target. We'd almost eliminated it but Billy has a tremendous strike and I told him to just hit the target.
"Billy will remember that and so will our supporters for as long as they live."
On the performance that saw a injury savaged Crewe side, with 7 players who would walk into the 16 out injured, fail to hold onto the lead after slipping behind losing it to a fortunate Wigan goal in the last 10 minutes.
"We got off to a bad start and from a defending point of view we couldn't deal with the crosses coming into the box. In fact our defending was poor in the opening minutes.
"We pulled it back though and got in front, but in the first half I thought that we looked capable of conceding a goal at any time.
"In the second half though we were much better and did well despite the wind I thought we played better. The defenders coped much better and got on top of the forwards. But we didn't have enough players playing really well to make a big difference.
"I thought we were unfortunate at the end when the referee disallowed our goal for handball because I thought we had equalised. If we had have equalised I think it would have been deserved."
QUOTES THANKS TO CREWEALEX.NET