THE Brewers travel to Gillingham tomorrow for the first away league game of the season just as they did a year ago.
On August 11, 2018, the Brewers lost 3-1 so Albion manager Nigel Clough has every reason to be wary of the threat the Gills pose on home turf.
He said: “Gillingham with it being their first home game it will be tough, and they have four good players going forward who have the pace and power to cause you problems. We will have to defend very well and try and play it our way if we can.
“We saw how Ipswich came to stop us from playing and almost anything they got was on the back of that. That was a marker of what teams are going to try and do here and even away from home.
“We have to be a little bit better and braver in certain situations but without doing too much different we would have got at least a point out of the game on Saturday. You can see the lift they got from the goal. It’s a speculative effort from 25 yards and it gets a big deflection. Any team that gets that kind of break will get a big boost from it and something to hang on to.
“We have to still get the ball down and play as well as we can, and we certainly need to do that tomorrow and deal with Gillingham’s threat.”
The Brewers will be without the suspended Stephen Quinn, and the injured David Templeton but will have had an extra week to bed in new signings Oliver Sarkic and Nathan Broadhead.
Clough said: “Oliver Sarkic still needs to get up to speed but Nathan Broadhead is fine in terms of fitness having been with Everton’s first team and having played games and he’s an exciting young player. He’s right in the mix for starting on Saturday.
“He runs without the ball which is something we need and were lacking on Saturday. Liam Boyce and Lucas Akins are almost too honest at times and keep showing for the ball. We need to work on running behind.”