Clough beaming after ‘brilliant’ Burton beat Tranmere

Posted Friday, December 27, 2019 by PA

Nigel Clough was a delighted Burton boss as he witnessed his side record back-to-back Sky Bet League One wins for the first time this season as they edged a 4-2 thriller against Tranmere.

Liam Boyce continued his current run of form in front of goal with a second-half brace after Scott Fraser had opened the scoring and Lucas Akins put the Brewers back in front after Morgan Ferrier’s equaliser.

Kieron Morris reduced the deficit to 3-2 in the 64th minute after Boyce had put Burton 3-1 up, only for the Burton man to finish things off four minutes from time.

“I thought our performance from start to finish was brilliant,” said Clough. “We were a little bit hard done by with the two goals that we conceded.

“A couple of free-kicks in the build up to them, that weren’t, got them back in the game but I thought some of our attacking play with 20 odd shots again and the quality of the goals was excellent.”

Albion were denied a penalty late in the first half when David Perkins brought down Stephen Quinn, with referee Ollie Yates rebutting Albion’s vociferous claims.

Clough was pleased that the players refused to let the incident define the game.

“If we don’t get those then we will never get another penalty again,” said Clough. “But we came out second half and for the first 15 minutes we were outstanding again and got the goals.

“Two more decisions go against us and they get back in it but I thought the way we handled the setbacks today was brilliant.

“Today we scored the sort of goals we score in training and that is nice to see. Confidence wise it is very important: two home games, six points and seven goals.”

Tranmere boss Micky Mellon was left to rue some poor defending from his side in what he termed a “patchy” performance as Rovers conceded four, showing familiar defensive frailties.

“If you think that we are going to score twice here at Burton you would think you were going to get some kind of result,” he said. “But some of the defending for the goals just wasn’t good enough over the course of the whole game.

“Overall they always looked a threat against our back four and they picked up enough balls in midfield and everybody else has seen the same as I have seen but I have to say it was a very patchy performance and we needed to be better in certain moments.”

Rovers twice got themselves back into the game after falling 1-0 and 3-1 down, but frustratingly for Mellon they could not take things on from those situations.

He said: “We got it back to 3-2 and their keeper makes a good save but then we lose another cheap goal and that is the disappointing thing. It is stuff that we work on all of the time but we have to keep trying to get better at it.”