Unfortunately not, unless you can find a website that will offer you an itinerary that way.
It should be valid - it's the only route that offers a cross-platform interchange (at Stockport), and it can be the fastest route, but unfortunately it's not defined as a permitted route.
I imagine that it would probably be accepted anyway, but if you want to be sure of validity you could buy/excess your ticket to Sandbach. However, you would also need to take a train that stops at Sandbach, and if you wanted to use it to go to Crewe, you'd need a Sandbach to Crewe return on top.
Alternatively you would need to split at Manchester - but that increases the cost by quite a bit, and ties you to going via Manchester.
I can't find any ticket that's valid via all possible reasonable routes - via Liverpool and Acton Bridge, via Liverpool and Chester, via Wigan and Warrington, and via Wigan and Manchester - if you actually want to go to Crewe.
The fact that you can get that full choice of routes, for the same price, if you're going to Sandbach gives away the fact that it's not really to do with preventing anomalies. It's just down to being "simple" (read: needlessly restrictive).