KEE TURNS THE SCREW ON STANLEY
BURTON Albion stormed back to winning ways but manager Gary Rowett still called on his troops to develop a ruthless streak.
As struggling Accrington Stanley came to town Burton were reeling from having not tasted victory in four games, slipping out of the automatic promotion places in the process.
However they got back to winning ways thanks to two Billy Kee goals, cancelling out Dean Winnard’s equaliser for the visitors.
But with the winner coming from the penalty spot ten minutes from time, Rowett is adamant his side need to do more if they are to earn promotion.
“I would say that’s the brightest we’ve started for a while, it arguably could have been two or three up in the first ten minutes,” he said.
“We wanted to come out quickly, put them under pressure and that’s what we did.
“I said to the players that at this stage of the season it’s all about winning games, it doesn’t really matter how you do it. It’s about winning games and that’s all.
“You can play as nice or as pretty as you want but if you don’t win the game then it’s irrelevant.
“We’ve had about 14 attempts on goal, seven on target.We should have scored more goals again. We’ve just got to be more ruthless.
“If we are more ruthless we will kill games off a lot earlier.”
Accrington’s Marcus Bettinelli made three excellent saves in the opening ten minutes to deny Burton.
But the breakthrough came in the 34th minute, a cross on the left side from Jimmy Phillips was only cleared to Kee whose shot deflected in off Winnard.
Accrington’s only chance of the half fell to Piero Mingoia who failed to turn the ball home after good work on the right by Kai Naismith.
The second half started slowly but burst into life in the 68th minute when Accrington got an equaliser out of nothing.
Referee Andy Haines awarded the away side a free-kick on the right-hand side, Lee Molyneux whipped in a wicked delivery at pace and the ball went in off defender Winnard.
The game seemed to be heading for a draw only for Burton to be awarded a penalty in the 80th minute, Winnard penalised for holding.
Kee stepped up and coolly slotted home his tenth league goal of the season, leaving Stanley boss James Beattie cursing Lady Luck once again.
“It was another decent away performance I thought,” Beattie said. “In the second half I don’t think Burton had a shot.
“I thought we rode our luck early on thanks to Marcus Bettinelli who has been a great goalkeeper for us.
“Then we got into our stride a bit more but we’ve come away with another narrow defeat which the lads are distraught about in the
dressing room.”