Crewe boss Lee Bell praised his players for conquering their “fear factor” to eventually see off bottom-of-the-table Sutton.
Substitute Elliott Nevitt’s 15th goal of the season sealed a nervy 1-0 win for the automatic promotion hopefuls, who went into the game having suffered back-to-back defeats.
On the “outstanding character” his team showed following that dent in confidence, Bell said: “After the two results we’d had prior to this game, it was all about picking up three points, but we have a young group who haven’t been in this position in the table before, so there seemed a bit of a fear factor in the first half.
“But I was pleased we showed outstanding character and desire to get the result. We knew it would be tough and we had to be patient and withstand a lot of balls into our box.
“We relaxed a bit after the goal and got back to playing with freedom again. We probably should have gone on to get another goal but one was enough.”
Bell went on to also credit leading marksman Nevitt for his reaction to being left out of the XI after he entered the fray as an early replacement for the injured Courtney Baker-Richardson.
“He didn’t start the game and we spoke to him about the reasons for that, but he epitomised everything that the team is about when he came on,” Bell said. “He works his socks off and showed that bit of quality he has got when we needed it.”
Sutton boss Steve Morison, meanwhile, was left to lament his team’s lack of a cutting edge, with an unmarked Joe Kizzi guilty of missing a glorious opportunity from four yards to open the scoring before Nevitt’s winner.
“It was an open goal and you’ve just got to score,” Morison said.
“If that chance had fallen to one of their players, they would have done, but that’s the nature of the beast at the moment.
“We had other opportunities in the first half as well and a big scramble at the end that we couldn’t get a shot away from. But I’m beginning to sound like a broken record and it’s hard for me to keep saying the same things most weeks because, once again, we performed well for long periods, but didn’t take chances when they came along and they took the one they had.
“I think everyone at the game could see we’re not far away as a team, but we know what’s at stake. We’re not hiding from that fact and that we need to be better.
“We just have to scrape the players off the deck now, so they’re ready to go again and, hopefully, the performances we are putting out most weeks will eventually lead to us taking a few chances.”