Gary Rowett has a theory that his Burton
Albion team is capable of finishing games very strongly, which is why he thinks
they may well have beaten Wimbledon last week if they had not had Zander
Diamond sent off.
That, of course, is his opinion and one which
cannot be backed up because we will never know if it would have happened. But
it was certainly the case that Burton were having a good spell in the game at
the time and Rowett thinks that as Wimbledon threw more caution to the wind in
search of the home win their league position so desperately needed, so the
Brewers would have been able to exploit the gaps that may have been left.
To listen to Rowett when he is talking like
this is interesting. Normally, what the public gets is an after-match
interview, conducted within five minutes of the end of the game when a manager
has to say the first thing that comes into his head, conscious that it is often
going out live on radio. You do have to be careful. And you also think of other
things you’d like to have said or better ways of putting things later, just as
you do in life.
What comes over when you chat to the manager about football is that nothing Burton do under him and Kevin Summerfield is
thrown together. It comes as a result of a lot of soul-searching and tactical
thought. Surely, when players know that is the case, they are more able to
accept it when they might not start or when they’re substituted. They know the
manager isn’t making it up as he goes along.
“We’re a very fit side,” said Rowett.
“I’ve looked at the facts from one or two of
our away games and we’re very competitive late in games.
“I thought we could have nicked the game at
Wimbledon. I thought we were getting on top of them. We also have a strong
squad now and I feel I’m getting to the point where we’re getting better
options coming off the bench in tight games, people who can really make a
difference.”
Wins earned late on at Southend United and
Plymouth Argyle back up Rowett’s theory.
But the Brewers manager also points out that
his side have one of the best records in the division for collecting points after
they have fallen behind in a game. That one’s not an opinion, the facts back it
up.
If you want to look for yourselves, they’re
on http://stats.football365.com/dom/ENG/D3/ptsgain.html
These are “points gained when losing” and
they show Burton, Southend and Rotherham United top of that table, having won
16 points in games when they have been behind. For Rotherham, that’s five wins
and a draw when they’ve been behind; for Burton and Southend, four wins and
four draws from a losing position.
“It tells me a lot about the character of my
players that we’re one of the highest points takers when we’ve gone behind,”
said Rowett.
“Some teams haven’t won a single game when
they’ve gone behind.”
Indeed, six of them haven’t in League Two,
including, perhaps surprisingly, second-placed Gillingham, although you could
argue, of course, that may be because they don’t actually fall behind too
often.
More stats? Only one team in the Football
League – Blackpool, with 17 - have earned more points than the three in League Two
when behind, although you can add Manchester United and Everton if you include
the Premier League. But who wants to include the Premier League?
All of that, then, is this week’s helping of
the information passed on by the manager which I didn’t have room for in Friday’s
match preview in the Derby Telegraph.
And finally, on a lighter note, I went to see
The Hobbit last week with my daughter, so I now know what our former manager
has been doing since he left…
An uncanny resemblance, don’t you think?
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