Alassana Jatta’s eighth-minute header was enough to secure victory for the Magpies, but the number of chances spurned by the hosts meant the scoreline could have been far more.

“From our perspective, we’re bitterly disappointed. They could have been out of sight within 30 minutes, really,” said Bell.

“We caught them on a really hot day and sometimes you just have to take your medicine.”

Despite defeat, Bell refused to criticise his side, noting the injury list the Railwaymen are battling with, and admitted he hopes to recruit some new faces to ease the crisis.

“You’ve always got that opportunity [at 1-0], but I can’t fault the players, not one bit,” he added. “They are putting themselves through it.

“We’ve just got to try and do the best we can to get us through this spell. The two or three games going into this one, we performed well.

“We need some help and we’re going to try and do that in the week by seeing if a couple of managers will do me some favours to get some bodies in.”

Meanwhile, home boss Martin Paterson, who watched the game from the stands owing to a touchline ban, accepted his side should have scored more.

“There’s things we can improve on, which is quite evident in terms of the chances we had, but, again, we’re not getting too carried away,” he said.

“It’s good that we end the day with a little bit of self-reflection in [the sense] that we need to get better at taking our goals and moments – and there were plenty of those.

“I thought we caught Crewe at a good time; they’ve got lots of injuries and we were well worth the win. It could have been more, but we know that if you get clean sheets, you’ve got a chance.”

Paterson, while noting the performance of goalscorer Jatta, was keen to praise the team effort, but also stressed he hopes to see an improvement in front of goal.

“[Jatta was] very important, but we all know that, and I thought there were other individual performances that were just as good,” he said. “It’s the collective and we don’t get carried away.

“There’s a long way to go, with lots of hard work, and we saw today that when you don’t take your chances, teams at this level stay in the game.

“I’m pleased with two or three elements of the game, but then the honesty, that I’ll always carry with me, says we need to be more ruthless – but they know that.”