Clough hoping to keep Burton in it till final day

Burton Albion manager Nigel Clough hopes that his Brewers side can take the battle for Sky Bet Championship safety to the final day of the campaign on May 6.

Clough is dreaming of another ‘miracle’ escape to clinch a third successive second-tier season for the little Staffordshire outfit.

Burton, who host play-off hopefuls Middlesbrough today, slipped to the foot of the table on Good Friday, when their 3-1 defeat at second-top Cardiff was followed by Sunderland’s much-needed 4-1 triumph at Derby.

“We would settle for taking it to the last day at Preston,” Clough told burtonalbionfc.co.uk.

“That would take a sequence of results but we’d settle for that as it would be a bonus.”

The former Derby and Sheffield United boss, in his second stint in charge at the Pirelli Stadium, believes that this season has been a much harder task for his Burton side, who won promotion from League One in 2016. “It’s a massive gulf and it has got bigger in the last 12 months,” added the 52-year-old Sunderland-born boss. “We have performed miracles getting out of League One and then staying in the Championship, so to get another one is unlikely, but we are going to try.”

Today’s game sees Burton try again to end their longrunning home famine, with their last success at the Pirelli coming back in midSeptember against Fulham.

Their only other home victory this term was a 2-1 August defeat of Birmingham.

On today’s clash, Clough said: “Middlesbrough spent a lot of money in the summer and have some of the most attacking and dangerous players in the league. They will be a handful, but we will try and compete with them.”

Reflecting on Friday’s loss, Clough added: “When they crank it up, as Cardiff did at times, they show why they are in the top two.

“Other teams in the division can’t live with that as well. That’s why you can’t afford errors or to waste opportunities when you get them as we did.”