Cup blow may be around the corner if Albion don’t raise game
SMALL wonder Dino Maamria was frustrated and angry after Tuesday night’s game against Tranmere Rovers in the Papa John’s Trophy.
It hardly seemed like a win after Burton Albion scraped through on penalties after a 1-1 draw they scarcely deserved.
The Brewers had shown their Jekyll and Hyde tendencies again in a performance that was every bit as bereft of inspiration as anything they produced under Jake Buxton or, in the latter half of his second spell in charge, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink.
I described the display as “dire” and “awful” in my on-the-whistle match report for our website and wondered if, the next morning, I might think that I had been a bit harsh.
Instead I found that Maamria had also used the word awful and a few more choice ones in his after-match assessment.
It must be incredibly difficult for any manager to think he is making progress with a team and then to see them take the backward steps they did against Tranmere, especially after how positive the previous two games had been.
And yet… they got away with it. Perhaps when he looks back on it, Maamria can find some comfort in that.
At times this season – and it is something most struggling teams find – it has seemed that every single mistake Burton make is punished to the full by their opponents.
Tranmere did not manage to do that. Ben Garratt comes in for his fair share of criticism but he made three big saves even before Tranmere scored in the seventh minute. And in the end, his was the only penalty save in the shoot-out, while four players were failing to get their shots on target at all.
He should not have had a prayer, though, when Kane Hemmings ran clear in the second half with the sort of chance we saw him gobble up so efficiently while he was with Burton.
Hemmings blazed the ball over the bar. Two-nil at that point and no way would the Brewers have been in the third round.
It still looked like the one early goal would be enough. Albion’s attempts became ever more laboured, despite Mustapha Carayol coming off the bench to do what he does, which is put decent crosses into the box almost every time he has the ball.
The other thing Carayol has now done twice for Burton is to react quickest to a loose ball in a goalmouth scramble. He did it against Bradford City in the group stages of the Papa John’s Trophy and, more crucially, did it in the 92nd minute against Tranmere.
Suddenly, a game Burton had deserved to lose was going to the lottery of penalties, not that the toss of a coin mattered much, as whichever end the winning captain chooses in this competition, there are no fans behind the goal.
It was hardly a classic shoot-out, either, as Terry Taylor continued his unfortunate record of not getting a shot on target, hitting the inside of the post, before three successive efforts blazed over the bar gave Bobby Kamwa the chance to put Burton through, which he took almost apologetically.
Burton had shown what they can do against League Two opposition in the previous Papa John’s game, brushing Bradford City aside 4-0 with some clinical finishing.
Bradford sit a good bit higher in their division than Tranmere, who had not won in seven but … well, it’s a funny old game, as they say.
Micky Mellon, the Scotsman in charge of Rovers, has been around a bit as a manager, with five promotions on his CV.
He is in his second spell as Tranmere manager and had two with them as a player.
If he told his team to make the fastest possible start and to harry the League One strugglers to death, he was absolutely right and they did just that, certainly far more so than Bradford managed.
We waited and waited for the opening storm to blow itself out, for Burton to settle down, get a foot on the ball and start to impose themselves, and it never happened.
In the end, what happened to Rovers has happened to Burton often enough this season. They did not capitalise on being on top and paid for it.
As Maamria said, the only positive was that, somehow, his team stayed in the game, kept on trying and eventually got a reward for it. That is something they could do with managing more often and a second successive game in which they managed a stoppage time equaliser is not something to be sniffed at.
I also think that when he watches it back, he may conclude that the other positive was another monumental performance by Sam Hughes, who surely did not lose a defensive header all night and, just as against Plymouth Argyle on Saturday,
won important headers in the opposition box too.
Hughes is becoming the player everyone felt he could be in his first loan spell, before his cruciate ligament injury, and if Hasselbaink was right about one thing, it may well have been the assertion when signing him that Hughes is a future Brewers captain.
But, returning to the original point.
How could the Brewers be so competitive against Charlton Athletic and Plymouth Argyle and so uncompetitive, for the most part, against Tranmere Rovers?
Managers all over the country are wondering the same about inconsistent teams at every level, I guess, but if Burton are not better against Chippenham Town on Sunday in the FA Cup, they may find the nonleague visitors less forgiving than Tranmere.