STEVE Davis will assess James Tunnicliffe's shoulder injury before making defensive changes for tomorrow night's home clash against Accrington Stanley.

The on-loan Wycombe centre-half was forced off in the second half of Saturday's 1-0 defeat at League Two leaders Southend.

It was only the 23-year-old's second game of his loan spell, but Davis is hopeful the injury will not spell a premature end to his stay at Gresty Road.

"James went for a diving header and landed on his shoulder. It popped out, but we'll have it X-rayed, although it doesn't look like he's dislocated it," said Davis.

The Crewe boss declared himself satisfied with his side's defending, but not their attacking prowess at Roots Hall. They restricted the front-runners to a handful of chances until Bilel Mohsni won the race to the loose ball when Steve Philllips parried a Ryan Hall free-kick.

"I didn't think it was a free-kick and one or two of their lads said so afterwards," revealed Davis.

"Luke (Murphy) had covered the danger, so it was an unnecessary challenge from Carl Martin. But I didn't think there was any contact.

"Other than that we didn't really make any mistakes and Southend didn't cause us that many problems.

"We're still hard to beat, but we didn't create enough opportunities – our three up front weren't enough of a threat.

"We did the same at Oxford last month in terms of defending well, but we created a bit more and managed to get a goal."

After the game Davis had to broker the peace after a second-half altercation between keeper Phillips and Dave Artell.

"They were having a little argument about the goal. They both apologised in the dressing room afterwards and it won't happen again," he said.

"Steve has got to be better equipped to cope with any criticism he gets."

Crewe's defeat leaves them five points adrift of a play-off place, but Davis insisted: "We remain positive. We've got two home games coming up (Accrington and AFC Wimbledon) to bounce back.

"We knew this was going to be a hard game, but we weren't fazed and came here expecting to get something."

GWYN GRIFFITHS