24/06/2020 - Young centre-back has been at Stamford Bridge since he was nine but after a season of learning on loan at Burton Albion, his release at 21 means the next step is approaching“The first thing that happened was a ball got kicked in the air at me and I got an elbow in the face,” Richard Nartey says as he recalls his gritty introduction to League One after going on loan to Burton Albion. The centre-back, who has been at Chelsea since he was nine, knew it was time to sink or swim. He was making his professional debut after coming off the bench against Bristol Rovers in August and it was a rude awakening.“I was a bit dazed,” Nartey says. “It was my wake-up call. I was telling myself: ‘You’ve got to give it back. You can’t act like this young person from Chelsea, otherwise people will pick on you.’ I had to show I could do all the physical stuff and let my technical side show as well.” Related: The Chelsea academy has a new generation of talent on the way Continue reading... Collapse

05/04/2020 - The former Spurs and Burton midfielder discusses the impact of Ugo Ehiogu’s death, swapping football for a creative career and helping players with depressionI have been playing a song about life and death on a loop today. While waiting to interview Will Miller, the former Spurs and Burton Albion footballer who wrote and sang the song just days after the death of Ugo Ehiogu, his former coach who died in April 2017 aged 44, the ghostly video of Crash Landing has been spooling out of my laptop. On a muted, sun-kissed afternoon, it offers a melancholic and beautiful soundtrack for these unsettling times.For Miller, Ehiogu’s death felt like “a crash landing on the moon”. Three years on, trying to adjust to our new isolated reality with illness and death all around us, life continues in an eerie way. “It’s weird,” Miller says. “But sometimes you have to switch course. I remember being absolutely certain I was going to play first-team football for Tottenham. When I realised it wouldn’t Collapse

29/10/2019 - Leicester advanced to the Carabao Cup quarter-finals despite being spooked by Burton. Brendan Rodgers’ men seemed set to dish out another emphatic beating after goals by Kelechi Iheanacho and Youri Tielemans put them 2-0 up after 20 minutes.But rather than lie down like Southampton, the League One side rebelled, halving the deficit thanks to a Liam Boyce and forcing Danny Ward to make several fine saves. James Maddison came off the bench to settle the tie in the 89th minute. Related: Man City 3-1 Southampton, Everton 2-0 Watford: Carabao Cup – as it happened Continue reading... Collapse

20/08/2019 - The best teenagers at Ajax, PSV, AZ and Utrecht do not play in a youth league. They face men in the country’s second divisionBy Gavin Willacy for Playing in the ShadowsDespite Ajax going desperately close to reaching the Champions League final, the Eredivisie seems to be out of fashion with Premier League recruiters. Only two players moved from the Dutch league to the Premier League this summer. Coincidentally, they went to last season’s top two, with Manchester City paying PSV £5.3m for Angeliño and Liverpool signing 17-year-old Sepp van den Berg from Zwolle for £4.4m. In contrast, six players arrived from Belgium at a cost of £98m.Below the top six clubs in the Eredivisie, budgets are small, ranging from €7m to €17m, similar to clubs towards the top of League 1 and bottom of the Championship. The Eredivisie has been a source of talent in the past. Dennis Bergkamp, Ruud van Nistelrooy and Luis Suárez were all top scorers in the league before lighting up the Premier League. And both Collapse

23/01/2019 - Sergio Aguero scored the only goal of the second leg as Burton salvaged a little pride after their nine-goal nightmare. 10.10pm GMT And that, my good friends, is your lot. Peter Lansley was our man at the match, and his report is here. Congratulations to Manchester City on reaching their seventh League Cup final; commiserations to Burton Albion, though take nothing away from their wonderful run to the semis, and the way they bounced back from despair to give a great account of themselves tonight. Thanks for reading; sweet dreams, wherever you are! Related: Sergio Agüero puts icing on cake for Manchester City against Burton 10.07pm GMT And now Cloughie Jr. gives his verdict. “We came very close a couple of times, I’m very pleased with the way we played tonight and went about it. We got a bit of pride back. We showed a lot of spirit, some good youngsters as well. I thought we pressed them and did everything we could tonight. The pressure was off, of course, with the tie being over. Collapse

22/01/2019 - • Defender has not featured since November injury• ‘This is an unusual situation to be in when it is a semi-final’Pep Guardiola has confirmed Benjamin Mendy has the opportunity to begin his comeback from his latest injury in Manchester City’s Carabao Cup second leg semi-final at Burton.The Premier League club are 9-0 up from the first leg and appear to be as good as in next month’s final already, but Guardiola intends to use the fixture to give match time to Mendy, Kevin De Bruyne and a handful of youth players. Related: Pep Guardiola says Manchester City must improve to win the league Continue reading... Collapse

09/01/2019 - Brazilian hits four goals past Burton after manager challenges him to dislodge Sergio Agüero from the central striking roleThis was Gabriel Jesus’s first four-goal haul for Manchester City could not have been better timed. After Pep Guardiola’s pre-game stance that the Brazilian and Sergio Agüero have to compete to be his centre-forward it was a big chance to bid for the XI when Wolverhampton Wanderers visit on Monday evening.Turn in the kind of high-energy display his manager loves and Jesus might begin to convince Guardiola he should dislodge Agüero, who was absent due to flu but is expected to train on Thursday. And, if Jesus could add to his eight strikes his case could be made even stronger – and Guardiola’s choice more difficult. Related: Pep Guardiola hopeful of contract extension for Vincent Kompany Related: Manchester City 9-0 Burton Albion: Carabao Cup semi-final – as it happened Continue reading... Collapse

08/01/2019 - The Burton Albion assistant manager turned down Manchester United as a player and ended up embarrassing Manchester City, who he faces again in the Carabao Cup semi-finalsGary Crosby looks slightly baffled when asked what he thinks comes up when his name is typed into Google. “I don’t know, I’ve never looked myself up once,” Burton Albion’s assistant manager says. “I’ve never watched any games back that I’ve played in – no point. So I haven’t got a clue. ‘Joiner’, hopefully, because that’s what I am.”A friendly and refreshingly down-to-earth character, Crosby has been talking candidly at Burton’s Pirelli Stadium for nearly an hour, reminiscing about the days when he was running down the right flank against miners one week and signing for Brian Clough and upsetting Alex Ferguson the next. Plucked from non-league football at 23, the winger racked up more than 150 games for Nottingham Forest between 1988 and 1994, in a period when cup finals were so commonplace for Clough and his players Collapse

30/10/2018 - Nigel Clough has brewed up another heady upset, guiding Burton to the Carabao Cup quarter-finals at the expense of the club he and his father helped to worldwide fame. It was no fluke. This was a deserved triumph for Burton, secured thanks to an own goal by Saidy Janko and excellent efforts by Scott Fraser and Jake Hesketh. Replies for Forest by Lewis Grabban and Arvin Appiah could not save the Championship side.Burton had never reached the last 16 of the competition before while Forest were aiming to progress to the last eight for the first time in nearly 25 years – before which they lifted the trophy four times, all under the management of Brian Clough and twice with Nigel in the team. To advance Forest would have to score at the Pirelli Stadium, which they had failed to do on their two previous visits. Continue reading... Collapse