Preview Percy once went for a job in the offices of a well-known brewing establishment based in Burton On Trent. Among the perks of the job was free beer.
He failed to land the role when they worked out that his consumption would probably bring the company to the verge of bankruptcy. Brewing’s loss is also our loss I suppose. Here’s his look at Saturday’s trip to Staffordshire...
Next up we take a day off from the travails of the league grind to turn our attention to matters Cup related as we head to the Midlands where we will be hosted by Burton Albion. Kick-off is at 12:30 for coverage on TNT, a ludicrously early time when most sensible people are wondering about getting up for the day’s first visit to the Swan and Superinjunction for their first pint of Allardyce’s Quite Peculiar.
I’d set off about 10 minutes ago if I were you. Note should they be required, extra time and penalties are available to settle the tie whilst there will be no VAR in operation.
So Burton Albion then. I’ll admit that my awareness of them, like I suspect most people outside Staffordshire and it’s neighbouring counties, was limited to the fact that every so often Nigel Clough would arrive to take over as manager. In fact Clough had just the two spells in charge.
His first saw him take over in 1998 when they were in the Southern League. Being slap bang in the middle of the country meant that they used to be used as a bit of ballast, shuffling between Southern and Northern Premier Leagues depending on which area was short of clubs for any particular season.
Clough put an end to this North/South nonsense by getting them promoted to the Conference in 2001/02. He guided them to the brink of promotion to the Football League in 2008-09 before leaving them 13 points clear at the top of the Conference to join Derby County.
A few weeks later the betting company that sponsored the Conference at the time elected to pay out on any bets on Burton to win the league. Somewhat predictably to those of us who know how mischievous the Footballing Gods can be when they put their minds to it, there followed a slump in form that saw them scrape promotion to the Football League on the last day.
They have retained membership ever since, even having a couple of seasons in the Championship before returning to League One or Division 3 as I insist it should be named, where they reside at present. They had a bit of a run in the League Cup in 2018-19 reaching the semi-finals where they encountered Manchester City. A 9-0 defeat at the Emptyhad meant that they had it all to do in the second leg. I’m not sure what line-up City fielded but I suspect that it was of the reduced-strength variety as City held on to a 1-0 win.
So, back in Division 3 (or League 1 if you really must) they are currently managed by Gary Bowyer, son of former Forest player Ian, giving credence to the theory that your best chance of getting the Burton job is having a dad who once managed Forest. Look out for someone called Dyche turning up at the Pirelli in a few years.
They currently sit 4th from bottom in the final relegation slot with 32 points from 30 played. Mind you it’s a bit tight down there. Apart from Port Vale, with whom Burton drew 2-2 in Burslem last week, who are adrift at the bottom on 22 points, there are just two points between Blackpool, in 17th on 33 points, and Rotherham in 23rd spot on 31 points.
Their route to the 4th round of the Cup, a level they have now reached for just the second time in their history, has been fairly straightforward. They have yet to play league opposition in the tournament, disposing of St Albans City 6-0 at home in the first round, Brackley Town 3-1 at wherever Brackley is in the second round and Boreham Wood 5-0 over in Herts.
So, having told you pretty much all I know about Burton Albion, I think this would be a good time to move on to our weekly look at the Wild And Wacky World of Association Football. And finally, Tottenham finally worked out exactly what the straw would be to break the camel’s back.
The straw appeared in the form of the not-in-particularly-good-form shape of Newcastle, whose 2-1 win at the Toilet Bowl was enough to see Thomas Frank relieved of his duties. I suspect that Frank fist pumped all the way home after being given the news. Well it would have been pretty much the only chance he’d have had to do so over the past six months.
Elsewhere, and perhaps a bit surprisingly, Sean Dyche also got the heave-ho at Forest, who decided that having over 30 shots against Wolves without scoring was also beyond the pale.
With Forest being owned by the chap from Olympiakos who has a reputation for being, shall we say, a bit difficult, and with Tottenham being, well, Tottenham that bleeping noise you can hear all over the place is the sound of mobile phones being turned off by unemployed managers up and down the country lest they get the dreaded phone call. Even Allardyce, whose name must be near the front of the phonebook, must be thinking of changing his number at the moment.
Meanwhile, if you thought that the intelligence levels of football punditry were low – and I’m including the employment by broadcasters of anyone called “Jamie” in that regard, just take a look at this week’s BBC prediction article. For the uninitiated, this is the weekly column on the BBC website in which their tame pundit, currently Chris Sutton, puts his prediction up against some celeb or other – usually one that even their own Mum would fail to pick out of a line up – with a league table of sorts being posted up each week.
In the past Mark Lawrenson, the previous incumbent of the post, used to predict us to lose so often that people made fortunes on betting the other way, and the word “Lawro” became the ultimate KUMB insult. This weekend’s effort plumbed new depths, however.
The celebrities pitting their predictive talents this week were none other than, wait for it, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig whose hitherto unheard-of knowledge of English football was posted up complete with oh-so-hilarious speech impediments. Yes really. I mean it must be pretty demeaning for those involved to having to lower themselves to sharing a stage with the likes of Chris Sutton.
And so to us. It was gutting to drop two points the other night to a bit of a freak goal. The match as a whole did rather prove my point that the media hype over their win over Tottenham the other week was well over the top – when confronted with a half-decent team consisting of 11 men they had to revert to type and rely on a remarkably generous seven minutes of stoppage time to scrape a thoroughly undeserved draw.
Of course we weren’t entirely without culpability in considering the result. If we’d buried at least one of those chances we’d have been going into this weekend in a much different mood. However, subsequent results were far from unkind to us so things could have been worse.
Still on the bright side, the idiot waiting for his haircut will have to wait a while longer, leading to speculation that he will go back to supporting whoever he supported before he decided that the Salford mob were the “team for him” before the shampoo bill bankrupts him.
On the team news, Pablo missed out the other night having succumbed to the curse of the new striker that seems to affect our new signings. I can see why we brought in Taty and Traore at the same time – the thinking was clearly something along the lines “if we sign 3 attackers they can’t ALL get injured, can they?”.
Details of Pablo’s “knock” are a bit sketchy but it seems that it will be a good few weeks before he is fit again. He joins Lukasz Fabianski in the treatment room whilst Jean-Clair Todibo must be wondering about his place as he serves the last of his three-match spell on the naughty step, given the decent form . We do know that Areola will start, with the manager settling on him for Cup games at the moment. And the smart money would suggest possible starts for Traore, Scarles and Potts to give some of the more valuable assets an injury-free weekend.
So, to the prediction then. Yes I am aware of the “romance of the cup” – partly due to the club reminding me of it in their email suggesting I buy Daisy a replica shirt (one very old-fashioned look from Daisy told me exactly how bad an idea that would be). And yes, I have a whole lifetime’s worth of cup upsets behind me to remind me that we have a certain traditional fallibility on these occasions.
However, we are facing a side that has had just the one win in their last nine. And, whilst we are likely to be making changes from the (relatively) stable side that has seen a recent upturn in form, most of the replacements will have had some involvement or another in recent matches so we will be far from the disgusting situation that Allardyce put us in up at Forest that time where he sent out what was virtually a Development Squad to make a point to the owners at the expense of us mugs as supporters.
So with that in mind I fancy us to get an away win on this occasion. So the £2.50 I was going to spend on getting a cartoon character in to write this week’s preview (we couldn’t afford any of the Simpsons and Wile E Coyote wanted paying in Acme vouchers) will instead go on a wager at Winstone’s for us to prevail by a 3-1 scoreline.
Enjoy the game!
When last we met: (N/A)
This is our first competitive encounter. A “West Ham United XI” did lose a pre-season friendly 4-2 up there a few years back, but since the side we put out consisted of a mixture of development squad players and trialists you’d be stretching a point to call it a first XI match.
Referee: Lewis Smith
Relatively recent addition to the so-called Select Group. Largely employed in the Championship so a bit of an unknown quantity.
Danger Man: Tyrese Shade
Although not their top scorer (Jack Beesley has that honour) he has saved his best for the Cup from which five of his 10 goals this season have come. Apparently Burton turned down a decent offer from an unnamed Championship club during the last window.
Percy and Daisy’s Amazing Burton Fact Of The Week Type Thing
Burton Upon Trent is the traditional home of the English brewing industry. The Bass red triangle symbol is the oldest registered trade mark in the country having the register number Trade Mark 1. Look I didn’t say it was interesting, ok?
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