It’s Clough at bottom
BURTON boss Nigel Clough felt his team’s performance deserved all three points in a dour stalemate.
The home side were booed off at the end and missed the chance to climb up the Championship and challenge for a play-off place in front of their lowest attendance of the season – 13,815.
Clough said: “It’s two points dropped and the performance deserved the three points.
“I thought our performance against Aston Villa last week deserved something and to play as well as we did in two games and only get one point is very harsh on us.”
The result kept the visitors propping up the league and four points from safety.
Burton had two chances to win the game with Darren Bent’s shot being saved by Ipswich keeper Bartosz Bialkowski in the 56th minute before another magnificent stop in the dying moments from a Kyle McFadzean header.
Ipswich boss Mick McCarthy admitted his team were lucky to pick up a point.
He said: “They kept going and a lesser together and committed bunch of lads could have been beaten.”
THESE are hard and worrying times in the Potteries.
And Columbia star Jose Izquierdo and Charlie Adam made sure escaping the drop is going to be a lot harder than it should have been.
In a game they could hardly afford to lose, City did at least salvage a point but that was only because Davy Propper missed a 75th-minute sitter when he only had Stoke keeper Jack Butland to beat.
Brighton must have headed back to the south coast with mixed emotions, they should have taken all three points but could have easily gone home with none and were grateful to keeper Mathew Ryan and sub Anthony Knockaert.
Stoke grabbed an equaliser with their first shot on target – and very nearly snaffled all three points in a dramatic finale.
A late, late penalty save by Ryan denied them after Stoke’s Spanish loanee Jese threw a strop when he won it but was prevented from taking the spot-kick. Jese, who was back in the squad for the first time since December because of disciplinary and personal problems, could be in hot water again after his childish antics when Adam stepped up to the mark.
And how must Jese – and Stoke’s saviour Xherdan Shaqiri – have felt when the Scotland midfielder missed and then was robbed by Lewis Dunk as he tried to get to the rebound.
From the corner, Mame Biram Diouf looked to have clinched a dramatic winner but goal-line technology showed that the whole of the ball had not crossed the line when Anthony Knockaert headed it away.
Stoke boss Paul Lambert admitted he did not see Jese’s reaction to having the ball taken off him but said: “The penalty in the last minute was a big opportunity to win the game. I would be more concerned if everyone was shying away from the penalty, that’s when problems arise.
“He wanted to win the game for his team and he wanted to score but Charlie felt confident and he scored the last one.
“He is a confident person and he has got a great left foot and if you ask him to put it in he will. I’ll never blame anyone, we win as a team and lose as a team.”
Stoke fans bayed for the sacking of Mark Hughes a few weeks ago but maybe some of them will now be wondering what they were letting themselves in for.
Lambert was sacked three years ago by Aston Villa, who were relegated to the Championship the following season.
And his return to top-flight management will certainly end the same way unless he can transform this nondescript side short of confidence into a fighting machine.
In fairness, the Stoke fans – a record 29,876 of them packed into the bet365 Stadium – backed their team for much of the game and there were only the