David Artell stressed Crewe will need to beat more teams near League One’s basement after the Railwaymen claimed only their second win of the campaign.

The bottom club offered their fans hope with a first win in 11 games against a depleted Gillingham, whose boss Steve Evans compared the team’s pre-match meal to a school outing as he fell back on youth.

Chris Long’s early strike should have been added to as Crewe dominated the first half, but they survived several scares with the Gills hitting the woodwork twice before Tom Lowery grabbed a stoppage-time second to seal a much-needed win.

Relieved Alex boss Artell said: “One win doesn’t make or break a season. But will I get eight hours of sleep tonight? I hope so. This has got to be the start of something and while it’s not going to be plain sailing we’ve got to make sure we go about our work and if we do we can beat teams like Gillingham.

“We’ve got to make sure that against teams in and around us we win more than we lose.

“We looked more like a team and we thoroughly deserved to win the game. We’d been a bit more prescriptive with the players in training and I think it showed. We controlled the game for long periods even though we were guilty of overplaying at times.

“We could have been 3-0 up at half-time. They hit the post twice, but we had numerous chances in both halves.”

Gills boss Evans said: “We weren’t good enough in the first half, but in the second we were. We created three or four opportunities to equalise and if we had we’d have won the game as we were so much on top in the second half.

“You have to look at the players we have left out back at home – eight would have started the game.

“The positive to take from this was how young we were. That’s a positive for the long term, but we’re here for the short term and we need to win some football matches. But young Harvey (Lintott) is 18, Bailey (Bailey Akehurst) has just turned 18 and we had a 16-year-old coming off the bench too.

“We sat at the pre-match meal and said it was like taking school kids for an outing.

“At half-time I told them they needed to step up their intensity and they did that. We were so far on top after the break, but being on top doesn’t win you games.”