The Imps unbeaten run came to an end last night with a 1-0 loss to Burton Albion in a cold and miserable night at Sincil Bank.
Mark Kennedy made three changes to the side that beat Wycombe Wanderers on Saturday. Adam Jackson returned at the back and replaced Sean Roughan. Max Sanders came into the midfield in place of Matty Virtue, while there was a welcome return for Ben House in attack. We were able to name some senior players on the bench too, with
I believe we made a strong start to the game, playing attractive football and controlling the possession. Despite facing a seemingly well-organized Burton team, I was confident that we would eventually score. During the first ten minutes, we had three decent opportunities to score, with the first chance falling to Ben House from Poole’s pass down the flank, but he hit the ball straight at Craig MacGillivray, which was our only shot on target. Shodipo had a promising performance in the first half and managed to get a shot away, although he could have done better with the chance. Dylan Duffy, who impressed me again, showed some impressive skills and almost found the back of the net through a cluster of defenders inside the first ten minutes.
At that point, you’d expect us to go and and score a few to win the game comfortably. We were moving the ball well and we had complete control. What we needed though was an early goal. and you could see Burton growing in confidence, the longer it stayed 0-0. I said before the Wycombe game to a family member not to expect a game of football, and although it wasn’t as bad as we’ve seen Wycombe recently, I was right. I don’t mean that to be disrespectful to Wycombe, long ball football has been around a long time and still to this day, it’s extremely effective for some but with the introduction of more modern ways of playing football, people don’t like watching that style. Burton are very much like Wycombe, and I feel away from home Burton are a very long ball type of side and in the past few seasons we have struggled. They looked good in the air, better than Wycombe which surprised me, but I felt that if we didn’t score in the first half, we’d have a really tough game on our hands.
Burton have a few good technical players. I’m a big fan of Joe Powell over there and he’s a player that I check up on every summer to see if he’s out of contract etc, because I was really hoping we’d sign him when Burton did in January 2020. He’s exceptional with the ball at his feet and how he hasn’t been picked up by a bigger club in the division yet, I don’t know. He always seems to remind us as well what we potentially could have got, he always has a good game against us. I remember the final game before lockdown, he scored two and last season he got a goal and assist in our 2-1 defeat to them at home. Last night was no different, he looked dangerous on the ball and if Burton were going to get something from the game, he would have been at the heart of it.
The first half went by quite quickly and I was fairly happy with our performance. It hadn’t been great but there were positive signs there and I thought we’d go on and win but it would difficult. I was wrong. The second half was a completely different game, Burton came out and looked to get onto us, we were in trouble. They pushed men forward and got themselves chances, something we couldn’t do for big periods in the second half.
At the time, I couldn’t understand the Duffy change. I thought him and Mide were playing well and we didn’t need to change it but now I can understand it. Mark wanted to get Danny Mandroiu on to give him some minutes after his injury, and Dylan is a young kid who has played three games this season. Reflecting on it, it made sense but I thought Dylan was having a good game up until that point, so in the moment I wasn’t happy about it.
What I was happy about though was seeing Danny back on the pitch, he was on a really good run of form before his injury, so hopefully he can get back to them levels before the season ends. He’s going to be such an important player for us next season once he gets a pre-season with Mark under his belt. I firmly think he could be in the running for POTS next season if he finds some consistency.
Our main issue was that we ended up playing the type of game that wasn’t our intention from the off, and I think Mark will be quite annoyed about that. We resorted to playing long balls more frequently than we wanted to, and some of our players made decisions that weren’t quite up to par in the moment, for example, I though Sanders had a good first half but in the second half, he wasted too many opportunities with the ball at his feet, as did the centre-halfs at times. Good early chances came for House and Shodipo within the first five minutes of the second period, but unfortunately, they couldn’t convert and I think if one had scored, we would have been discussing a win today.
We had two more good chances, one from Shodipo, which was a really nice piece of play. His cross or shot (I’m not decided), went just wide and evaded Sorensen’s run at the far post. Lasse also had a chance, a mistake from a Burton defender saw the Dane through on goal. It wasn’t quite clear cut so he tried to knock the ball around the keeper, but run the other way round him but the ball rolled out for a goal kick. Unfortunately, we conceded off the back of probably our most dominant period in the second half. Erhahon made the initial error in the midfield trying to head the ball down to Jackson on the half-way line. That mistake meant Burton got a corner and they turned the ball home after a scrap on the goal line.
That was it for the game really, once Burton scored and I had confidence in them to hold out for the three points, considering how the second half had gone. The narrative is that we were awful and I don’t think we were really bad, the second half we lost our way but I think we won the first and lost the second so a draw would have been a good result. XG statistics back that up too, but obviously we made a mistake and conceded from a set piece, that’s how you lose games at the end of the day.
Like I said I don’t think either team did enough to win the game, but despite the defeat there is still so much to be positive about heading into the last away game of the season at Morecambe and then Shrewsbury. I’ll be at Morecambe, so hopefully we can return to winning ways.