Martin: Players need to recognise how serious the situation now is
MARTIN Paterson questioned whether or not his Burton Albion players recognised just how dangerous their situation is after Saturday’s demoralising 1-0 defeat at home to Port Vale.
A fifth straight home defeat and an overall winless run now standing at seven games sees the Brewers three points about the League One drop zone with Vale and Cheltenham Town below them having games in hand.
“The table doesn’t lie and I can’t stress enough to the players the magnitude of what is going on,” said the Albion manager.
“The group must not just think we will be OK – we need to get the results and put the performances in.
“We need to realise that the teams in the bottom quarter of the table will start winning games and we need to continue to get points on the board.
“I said last week this was a must-win game and certainly a not-lose game and we have lost again.
“That’s not good enough and it puts us right in the dogfight.
“We are in it now. We need points and as a staff we need to look at what we can do better.
“Things are not working for us at the moment, that’s for sure.”
A further concern for the manager was that he recognised the Valiants played as if they wanted the win more.
They were the team winning headers in their own box, winning second balls and coming out on top in duels in the middle of the pitch.
“We have had good performances and positives (recently) and I have stressed that positivity but now, especially at home, we need performances and the worrying thing for me is that they looked like they wanted it more in all facets,” he said. “Running, tackling, second contacts, the dirty side of the game, I thought they shaded us.
“We need to show the group that isn’t good enough.
“Every second ball, every setpiece we had, we ended up receiving a shot on our goal so there’s a little bit of organisation to be done and it’s very unlike us to say that a team out-fought and out-ran us.
“It was always going to be a tight game with a sloppy goal deciding it and we have come out of it at the wrong end again.”
While the Brewers were poor all over the pitch, their inability to score goals continues to be a huge issue.
Mark Helm had Burton’s two on-target efforts, one well blocked by keeper Connor Ripley and one an easy save for the former Burton loanee.
“It’s always a concern when you don’t score goals and you have to find different routes, different ideas,” said Paterson.
“We are not blessed with a team that scores goals when your top scorer is on five.
“We have to find ways to get goals and set-pieces are massive.”
The Brewers saw the return of Mason Bennett and Sam Hughes from injury, Bennett starting and Hughes making a late appearance from the bench, but were missing loan strikers Antwoine Hackford and Ademola Ola-adebomi.
“Antwoine has been sick and missed four days’ training and Mola pulled out of training with a hamstring,” said Paterson, “so we had two back and two others out but at least the two we got back are experienced players and we are certainly going to need their experience.”