SAFE-HANDS BART DENIES THE BREWERS
BURTON boss Nigel Clough left Portman Road with renewed confidence in his team’s fight against relegation after a hard-fought draw.
The Brewers edged the game in terms of chances and came close to a victory through former Ipswich striker Darren Bent and a deflected Kyle McFadzean header, but Bartosz Bialkowski was equal to them both either end of the second half.
A draw was enough to end Burton’s five-game losing run while keeping them four points from safety, but Clough is remaining optimistic with 15 games left to play despite feeling the disappointment of a missed opportunity.
“It’s two points dropped because we deserved three,” he said. “The performance at Aston Villa deserved something last week and to play as well as we have done in the last two games and only get one point is very harsh on us.
“It’s progression. From where we’ve come from the Reading game 10 days ago – we keep harking back to it and how bad we were, and we were – to then put in two performances like that away from home gives us a lot of encouragement.
“It’s nice to break the run of defeats and keep a clean sheet that we thoroughly deserve.”
The outlook on gaining a point against the league’s bottom side at home in front of the lowest Ipswich league attendance since October 1998 was decidedly less positive from Mick McCarthy, whose side remain eight points off the play-offs.
“It was frustrating,” he said. “It was probably the worst game here all season, our worst performance when I consider how we played and won games earlier on in the season, so it was tough. Maybe the opposition had a bit of a bearing on that because they played well.
“At the end of it you make sure you don’t get beat and we didn’t play well at all, it was a tough game because they made it really hard for us.
“I’d imagine Nigel’s come in here and thought their team has played well and acquitted themers selves well, so you have to give some credit to them, but we were disappointing because it was a poor performance by us.”
A drab first half ended with Ipswich unable to register a shot on target with Martin Samuelsen, Lloyd Dyer and Hope Akpan all firing high and wide of Bialkowski’s goal for the Brew- as Ipswich struggled to find any rhythm in the game.
Ipswich started the second half with some attacking purpose, but it was Burton who came close to an opener with the best chance of the game.
Bent raced towards goal and attempted to curl the ball around Bialkowski with his right foot, but the Polish goalkeeper spread himself wide to block in the 56th minute.
The next significant threat on goal came in the 80th minute as Ipswich substitute Mustapha Carayol grazed the right side-netting of the goal with a stinging effort on his Blues debut.
The Brewers almost Portman Road with three points but Bialkowski produced another excellent save to push McFadzean’s near-post header, from Samuelsen’s accurate corner, away from danger after it appeared to take a deflection off Luke Chambers on the way to goal. left