Jimmy happy but explains how Brewers can be better
ALBION GOOD AT WINNING THE BALL – NOW THEY HAVE TO DO MORE WITH IT
BURTON Albion’s outstanding performance to beat Portsmouth 2-1 in midweek should help them when they take on AFC Wimbledon at Plough Lane today, says manager Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink.
After a poor run of form, the Brewers got it right on Tuesday, allying their usual battling qualities to a much quicker and more accurate attacking effort.
It was too much for Pompey, caught in possession repeatedly, not least for both of the Brewers’ goals.
Hasselbaink says it was good to be going through a match video not highlighting mistakes but celebrating what was done right.
“It helps when you have a team performance like that, a really good team performance,” he said.
“We’ve looked at it again and shown the players the good things, the things we did really well on the night, how compact we were, how much we played in their half.
“The ones who played are happy, the ones who didn’t, want to and that’s a good thing.”
At his press conference for the Dons match, Hasselbaink was told about a statistic that the Brewers are ahead of everyone else in League One for winning back possession in their opponents’ final third.
He liked it – but the improvement, he says, will be to do better with the ball having won it back.
“I didn’t know that stat but it is one of our strengths and should stay one of them,” he said.
“That’s the work-rate and commitment that we try to have and what that brings to the opposition is that they need to work harder as well.
“I am not about only stats. The eye sometimes tells you a lot and then you go to the stats for confirmation. But we want to get better at it, we want to sustain the ball more
in those areas.
“Where we need to significantly improve is when we’ve won the ball back – what we do with it. We need to get more chances from it, more work for the goalkeeper and, hopefully, more goals.”
A more obvious statistic is that Burton have won each game in which they have scored first this season, as they did on Tuesday night.
“We do talk about the first goal a lot,” said Hasselbaink.
“We know it can’t happen all the time that you score first and, even if we don’t, we can still be calm, play our game and win the game.
“But it has been proved that we are better when we score first.”
For the second successive game, Albion will face a team struggling for recent form. Portsmouth – like Burton at the time – had not won in six when they came to the Pirelli Stadium, while the Dons, after a good start, have now lost their last four games, albeit one of those was a Carabao Cup exit away to Arsenal.
“We have looked at their results but it does not mean we will go there and think it will be easy,” said Hasselbaink.
“We’ll go there respecting them and try to work as well as we can. We’ll aim to attack them but with the right platform.
“They are a side who have changed a little bit but we think they will go back to what they were doing in the first games of the season.
“They have a lot of young, exciting players with a lot of energy and we will have to stop them getting into their rhythm, quieten down their crowd and take the game to them.
“They have a lot of energy in midfield and their wide players are very quick.
“I think it will be a high intensity game, although they’re not the Crazy Gang that they used to be. Like any League One game, it’s going to be first and foremost a battle and we have to be ready for that.”
The injury picked up by centre-half Michael Bostwick early in the second half on Tuesday will see the experienced defender once again sidelined for several weeks.
Ryan Leak replaced him seamlessly with a strong display and looks certain to keep his place.
“Michael is going to be out for a few weeks,” said Hasselbaink. “It’s not a really bad one but it will be at least three weeks.”
Jonny Smith also finished the game stretched out in pain on the touchline but the manager confirmed that was merely a bout of cramp and he will be available.
We talk about the first goal. It’s been proved that we are better when we score first Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink