Goals from Lewis Wing and Sam Smith weren't enough to salvage anything in a dead-rubber defeat at Burton.
So that’s that then. Well, hopefully anyway. You never know, it wouldn’t surprise me if the EFL slapped us with a new points deduction now we are mathematically safe. But let’s put cynicism aside for a little while - we’re safe and we’ll be playing League One football next season.
The football itself was pretty drab to be honest. Particularly the first half when we gifted them three really poor goals.
It’s an age-old and probably overused cliche, but the players really did look like they’d already set their deckchairs up on the beach in the first half. We were slow, off the pace and rightly found ourselves behind at the break.
Another Lewis Wing special was the saving grace of an otherwise really flat 45 of football - but not even that could spur the players on to find another few percent, with the hosts restoring their two-goal lead not long after.
And if you thought things couldn’t get any worse, the concourse ran out of lager at half-time. Imagine that: a football club in a town which literally brews a lager running out of that very drink.
Looking at it a bit deeper - maybe a bit too deep - the fact that the lack of beer was my biggest worry when losing at half-time to a once relegation rival in our last away game of the season perhaps says something about how good the turnaround from this team has been.
We should’ve been down and out. We were down and out. We had no hope and, as fans, were watching helplessly as our club freefell towards back-to-back relegations in front of our eyes.
But alas, here we are. With the luxury of being able to play our final game with the freedom of knowing where we’ll be playing our football next season. It truly is a remarkable feat, and only really one that we, as fans who have had to live through the torture of that has been this season, can truly understand.
To outsiders, we’ve probably always had the quality on paper to comfortably stay in this division. But this club has been through points deductions, unpaid wages and having its soul ripped out of it by an uninterested owner. And, in the on-the-pitch matters at least, we’ve come out the other side.
Yes we lost today. Deservedly so. But that is not the big picture today, it can’t be. And anyway I don’t think we particularly played awfully this afternoon - we were just off the pace and got punished.
As previously stated, we saw another cracker from Wing - who I actually think could’ve done better for both their first two goals, giving the ball away for the first and not closing down the second, but I think he’s got enough credit in the bank.
And we got to see our first league penalty since the first away game of the season at Port Vale - which is pretty mad when you think about it.
Try as the Burton stewards might as well, more than a fair few inflatables found themselves into the away end too.
So, all in all, a bland performance on the pitch, but the bigger picture is a rosy one. League One football next season, and with the right recruitment and being able to keep this manager and the core of the group, I genuinely think we should be looking upwards next year instead of toward the relegation zone.
