Show me how far we’ve come, urges boss Jimmy
IF, last week, the visit of Gillingham to the Pirelli Stadium brought Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink’s second term with Burton Albion almost full circle, then the circle is completed tomorrow when the Brewers face Oxford United in their final game of the 2020-21 League One season.
It was against Oxford in January that Hasselbaink and his assistant Dino Maamria, newly-appointed but not yet taking the team, watched the Brewers hit a new low, capitulating 5-1 at home to U’s with a completely dreadful performance.
In a way , it was a good thing. Hasselbaink and Maamria saw no false dawn, they saw absolutely everything that was wrong with the first half of the Brewers’ season.
Happily, as we now know, they also saw how to fix it and fix it they did.
Oxford will face a team with a very
different level of organisation and approach tomorrow as they chase a win which would give them at least a chance of finishing in the play-off places, while the Brewers vie for either 16th or 17th place in the table, double figures in points clear of the drop zone, whatever happens.
Oxford need to better Portsmouth’s
and Charlton Athletic’s results to reach the play-offs but they will certainly not face a Burton team in holiday mode.
The Brewers are a game away from going through the second half of the season unbeaten away from home.
It would be another remarkable achievement, although Hasselbaink is less concerned about that statistic than about his team’s general momentum.
“I don’t want to think about the unbeaten record, I just want to think about the game itself and take it to another step,” he said.
“How far have we come? Can we keep this winning mentality going right through into next year? It’s right through the club and we want to keep that.
“I’m going to put out as strong a team as possible.
“I owe the League that, I owe the other teams that – but I also want to see where we are.
“Oxford have something massively on the game.
“Can we still play our football and use that to our benefit?
“It is an important game for us, to see how far we have come and how we deal with the pressures.
“It’s going to be interesting.”
He is not surprised to have seen Oxford recover from a modest start to the season to make a second successive bid for the play-offs, having lost in the final to Wycombe Wanderers last time.
“When you see their players and their budget, it’s not a surprise,” said Hasselbaink.
“They were there last year, they are almost there again and they are a very good team, as we could see in January.
“They are very good going forward, so we have to respect them and contain them – and try to attack them with intent.”
hinted that one of his fringe players may get a chance to step in for one of the two.
He would not say who but Ben Fox and Ciaran Gilligan spring to mind.
“Ryan and Sean have been in massively key positions and they have played 90 minutes in the majority of the games,” said Hasselbaink.
“I have only taken Ryan off when we have had a game in the bag, then I’ve taken him off with 10 minutes to go and saved his legs.
“I might give one player a chance who hasn’t had a chance yet, to see where he is and what he can do, but I won’t change too much.
“It will be a big test for the others. Can they fill the places that were filled by those two lads who have done extremely well?”