DAVE Artell was furious with the way his players responded to falling behind at Fleetwood as Crewe's poor run continued.

They were blasted away by three second-half goals from the Cod Army and dropped to second from bottom of the League One table ahead of Tuesday's visit of fourth-placed Sunderland.

Callum Johnson's set-piece header opened the scoring on the hour mark to confirm the hosts' domination. Danny Andrew - lucky to stay on the pitch after a clash with Callum McFadzean with the pair among four booked amid an ugly melee - drove home the second from a free-kick (72) before Ged Garner rounded off a miserable afternoon for the Alex deep in stoppage time.

Artell said: "If there's one lesson for us to take away with us it's how we reacted to going a goal down. There was very little in the game before that first goal.

"I don't know how we conceded the first goal, the second goal wasn't a free-kick and their lad shouldn't have been on the pitch.

"One goal shouldn't be a knockout blow. The lad who should have been marking him was marking the wrong player, but then it all spiralled from there and that's disappointing.

"We were caught up in the emotion of the game and you can't let it affect you in that way."

Crewe barely threatened the home goal, despite the introduction of Chris Long and Mikael Mandron off the bench in the second-half, and will need to improve quickly as the Black Cats' visit is followed by a trip to second-placed Wycombe on Saturday (October 23).

The victory saw Fleetwood pull five points clear of Crewe, now up to 19th place.

Cod Army boss Simon Grayson said: "Danny (Andrew) was possibly a bit lucky to still be on the pitch, we've spoken to him about his reaction to the tackle. We could potentially have been down to 10 men and on another day a referee might have made a different decision."