Birmingham City - 5 Crewe Alex - 1

THE Bank Holiday turned into blue Monday for Alex fans who watched their side get ripped apart by Birmingham, and only heroics in goal by Jason Kearton stopped the final scoreline being even more one-sided.

Crewe had hoped to extend their unbeaten record with the visit to St Andrews and when the Alex opened the scoring with an excellent strike by Colin Cramb in the fourth minute of the game things looked promising.

However seven minutes later Birmingham levelled the score through Michael Johnson when he headed home right-back Gary Rowett's free kick.

The home side added further goals before the interval as Crewe's defence seemed unable to cope with crosses. John McCarthy gave the Blues the lead on 20 minutes and Furlong made it 3-1 with half an hour gone.

Following the interval, the home side continued to cause problems for the Crewe rearguard and goals from Holdsworth and substitute Ndlovu completed the scoring.

Crewe's best effort of the second half was a scorching shot from Mark Rivers which hit the upright and rebounded to safety.

Despite the 5 goals conceded, Jason Kearton made some excellent saves to deny the home side, spurred on by most of a crowd of 24,085, from increasing the final tally.

Crewe: Kearton, D Wright, S Smith, S Wright, Foran (Macauley), Charnock, Lunt (Bignot), Sorvel, Little (P Smith), Rivers, Cramb. Subs not used : Tait, Lightfoot.

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.