TOUGHEST LEAGUE IN THE WORLD Up, up, up to the Championship ... on £20,000!
BURTON’S LATEST SPENDING DWARFS PREVIOUS RECORD HOOPS ROLLING ON THE CHEAP
IT WASN’T until Nigel Clough dusted off Burton Albion’s chequebook that the full enormity of the club’s promotion hit home.
In making two signings of £250,000 each this summer, the Brewers’ boss didn’t just break the spending record at this homely Staffordshire club – he obliterated it.
When Kyle McFadzean arrived from MK Dons and Australia star Jackson Irvine followed from Ross County, former England international Clough guessed he was creating Burton history.
He recalled: “We broke our transfer record a couple of times – at least I was sure we had.
“I’ve been here 10 years now over the two spells and, after signing Kyle and Jackson I was absolutely certain that was the case. But when I asked around, no- one had a clue what the transfer record actually was.
“So we went back through our archives and worked out that the most the club had ever spent was £20,000 for Russell Penn, from Kidderminster Harriers [in 2009]. LONG gone are the days of big-money summer signing sprees at QPR.
Their biggest outlay this time was the £1.2million shelled out on Charlton’s Jordan Cousins. Boss Jimmy
“That knocked us for six. For a club to reach the Championship with a record fee of just £20,000 is one of the most incredible statistics I’ve ever heard.
“Honestly, we didn’t even know ourselves.”
Staggering
Leicester City’s Premier League triumph was a fairytale. But Burton’s elevation – they were playing non-League football just seven years ago – is equally staggering.
Their average attendance is little more than 4,000. But now the Pirelli Stadium will be playing host to Newcastle United, Aston Villa and a derby against, yes, Derby County.
Clough is a canny operator. He cut his teeth in the lower leagues.
He is a competitor too. And having played for one of the game’s great managers – who happened to be his dad – and his country, he is not subscribing to Floyd Hasselbaink (right) said: “The club’s mentality has had to change.
“We want to bring players through from the youth if they are good enough. I’m fully behind that.” Hasselbaink arrived the theory that it must be Burton, plus two others, to be relegated.
He’s ready to dig the Brewers out of that hole any way he can.
Clough added: “We thought about ruining the pitch. We thought we might have an advantage because the ground is so tight and the crowd are on top of you.
“We thought about generating a playing surface that other teams would not want to play on. Better players prosper on better pitches.
“Sometimes, when England go abroad you look at what has been prepared for them and they are playing on surfaces that clearly aren’t conducive to good football.
“No-one admits to it, of course. But it is recognised that the practice goes on in cricket.
“We asked ourselves: ‘ Why shouldn’t we do it? Why shouldn’t we make life difficult for the opposition?’
“But then we have players here who want to play, and it would have been doing them a disservice if we from Burton last December but once star man Charlie Austin was sold on, a mid-table finish at best was on the cards.
Matt Phillips has joined the likes of big earners Rob Green and Junior Hoilett in had cut it up – after all we have to play on it every other week.”
Next week, Clough will be on familiar territory, opening up the new campaign at the City Ground, a venue he knows only too well after over 300 league appearances and 101 goals for Nottingham Forest.
He said: “We are all still excited. It’s lasted the summer. Everyone is so looking forward to this season. We’ve got Forest in the first game, Derby coming in a few weeks.
Mismatch
“Nobody gave us a cat in hell’s chance of promotion last season. It would be nice to continue that by another year, and stay in.
“We might take a couple of beatings because of the quality of the teams we face – it might even qualify as a mismatch. I’m sure there will be individuals on the opposition side this season who earn as much as my entire squad.
“But we will enjoy it. We want them to have a go. We know we are favourites for relegation. But can we surprise a few people?
“We won’t get too down if we lose. We have to keep smiling. It’s a ridiculous game. We have exceeded our targets once. We’ll have a good go at doing so again.” moving on since, and Hasselbaink, 44, added: “Of course we want to get promoted but there are several things that have to happen first. We must get the platform and the organisation right.”