How much longer can Akins keep up his remarkable appearances record for Albion?
LUCAS IS STILL SUCH A KEY PLAYER FOR THE BREWERS
IF the day comes – and logic suggests it must eventually – that Lucas Akins is left out of the starting 11 by choice by a Burton Albion manager, it will be a jaw-dropping moment.
It has not happened, in the three major competitions, since the 201617 season when, with the Brewers safe in their first season in the Championship, Nigel Clough put him on the bench for the last game of the season, at home to Reading.
He had also been an unused substitute in two games in the 201516 season, under Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, as the Brewers began a campaign which ended in promotion from League One. They were the only two games he missed.
In the first Championship season, Akins also missed seven games with injuries. He had two with a hamstring issue, then five with a calf problem he picked up in the warmup before a game.
In the 2017-18 season, the second in the Championship, Akins limped off with a hamstring injury after only six minutes of a goalless draw with Bristol City on April 7, 2018, at the Pirelli Stadium.
It was the last occasion that anyone has seen Akins leave the field injured. Anyone feel like touching wood after reading that? He missed four matches, the only four he missed in the season, and then returned for the rest of what was ultimately a relegation campaign.
When the Brewers returned to League One the next season, Akins was an ever present in the League, the FA Cup and Carabao Cup.
In the curtailed 2019-20 season, he also played every League One game and four in the FA Cup. He missed only one game and that was in unusual circumstances.
He was booked in Carabao Cup ties against Port Vale and Bournemouth and therefore served his only suspension in his seven years and counting with the club, missing the next tie in that competition, when Burton went out 3-1 at home to Leicester City.
Without that, it would have been his second successive season as an ever-present and he would almost certainly have been ever-present again last season but for that one game away to Hull City when Burton travelled with 12 players missing either with Covid-19 or isolating after contact with someone who had it.
That, then, is only one League game missed in the last three seasons. It is a quite remarkable record, especially taking into account the squashed together schedule last season, owing to a later start.
How he keeps on coming back for more at the age of 32 is anyone’s
Only one League game missed in the last three seasons – and that for Covid-19 – is a quite remarkable record
guess. Nigel Clough always used to say that Akins was the fittest man in the squad, always ahead in the runs, and that he was the target for any player to try to catch in training.
Akins, one of the most engaging men you could meet in the game, never says a great deal about his fitness. He’ll occasionally say he does the right things and looks after himself, but anyone could draw the conclusion from the statistics and from watching him get about the field – it simply has to be the case.
Privately, he probably realises that he is also lucky, however naturally fit he is.
The apparently innocuous challenge that gave Louis Moult a serious ankle injury in pre-season, the freakish cruciate ligament injuries that have happened to Liam Boyce, Ben Fox, Callum Hawkins, Sam Hughes and Kieran Wallace in recent seasons – they can happen to any footballer at any time.
The fact that Akins has had hamstring injuries and a calf injury in his seven and a half years with Burton prove that he is not immune.
There have been a couple of occasions when he has gone down heavily, needed treatment and hobbled for a while. He has been described as doubtful more than once in previous managers’ pre-match injury roundups. But then he has always appeared on the team-sheet.
In the summer, speculation was rife. It seems likely, now, that Mansfield Town, under Nigel Clough, did enquire about John Brayford and Akins.
Of the two, it would have been the smaller surprise if Brayford had gone, since he has linked up with Clough enough times previously in his career, not least upon his return to Burton.
Akins was brought to the club by Gary Rowett and has played under four managers, including Hasselbaink twice.
The rumours came to nothing and Akins started his eighth season with Burton.
Then, as Hasselbaink’s summer signings began to mount up, it was possible to wonder if there might be a changing of the guard.
Might Akins finally have to give way to a younger man and find himself on the bench? So far, not a bit of it.
He has played every minute of the nine games so far and scored twice, bringing him to 332 appearances so far, with 70 goals.
The possibility of his place being under threat initially was knocked back by the injuries to forwards Moult and then to Jacob Maddox.
Now Maddox, at least, is heading back to fitness, along with a series of others. Could the question be raised again?
Time will tell but it will be a momentous decision when we do arrive at the point when Akins is no longer an undroppable first choice.