CLOUGH MISSES HOME COMFORTS
Ten-man Forest frustrate Brewers
THERE’S still little home comfort for struggling Burton. With results at the bottom of the Championship going for them, the Brewers could have climbed within a point of safety with a win.
But yet again they couldn’t get a victory at the Pirelli Stadium – and this time against ten men.
Forest had Eric Lichaj sent off after 28 minutes for a lunging tackle on Burton’s best player, the creative and dangerous Martin Samuelsen.
“Our last three performances have been very good but we’ve only got two points instead of six, which we deserved,” said Burton boss Nigel Clough.
“There is a frustration, yes. But if you’d seen us two-anda-half weeks ago against Reading, our lowest point, our performances compared to that have been excellent. It gives us something to build on.
“Another two points would have been nice, but everybody else at the bottom has lost. With our goal difference, we are four points from safety. That’s what we’ve got to focus on. We are still fighting.”
Burton, having not won at home since September and having now taken only two points out of 12 games, badly needed to take advantage of the rebuilding and patching-up being done at Forest.
Whether new manager Aitor Karanka needed to demolish the house he inherited from sacked Mark Warburton is a big question. But he has brought the bulldozers in and after signing ten new players, four of them made their full debuts against Burton.
There were also six changes from the Forest team beaten by Hull a week ago, so the last thing they needed was more disruption and chaos.
Lichaj was a hero just days before Karanka took over with his goals, one wondrous, that helped Forest beat Arsenal in the FA Cup. But he left Karanka in a pickle this time with a ferocious run and tackle on Samuelsen that left Forest with ten men for over an hour.
A kick in the head as he slid through Samuelsen laid Lichaj out. Lee Tomlin shouted to Karanka that Lichaj needed to be subbed. He was wrong. As soon as Lichaj got to his feet he was red-carded by referee Andy Davies, and Forest were suddenly undermanned to deal with a feisty game.
Clough thought the aggression Lichaj showed warranted the dismissal but Karanka’s opinion was different. “I don’t think it was a sending off,” he said. “But after the game is not the time to complain.”
Karanka, after so much upheaval, was more interested in the considerable character his team showed in stopping Burton ending their barren home run.
“The people who haven’t seen the game maybe think it is not a good point, but for me the performance and the effort of all the players has been really good,” said Karanka.
“We showed the character we need. That’s the key. We can start to build something.”
Samuelsen, eight minutes after being felled and again three minutes before half-time, might have put Burton ahead with a header wide and a pointblank shot that keeper Costel Pantilimon had to tip over the bar.
But it took Danny Fox to bravely block a Darren Bent piledriver in the second half to stop Burton winning, and now Clough needs victory at Barnsley on Tuesday to get a Brewers revival underway.