Hounsell Criticizes Heavily Altered Burton Squad Following Cup Elimination

Interim manager Tom Hounsell, who has recorded four victories in 11 matches across all competitions since assuming leadership of Burton, stated that the Burton Albion players selected for the Vertu Trophy’s second round squandered their opportunity to secure a regular spot in his Brewers team following a decisive defeat by Stevenage. For the knockout fixture, Hounsell implemented 10 alterations to his initial lineup, coming after a narrow loss to League One frontrunners Wrexham on Saturday. The significantly modified Brewers suffered a 4-0 home loss against their third-tier adversaries, Stevenage, on Tuesday evening. Speaking to BBC Radio Derby, Hounsell remarked, “This was an opportunity for players to showcase what they can do, and I think on the whole they pretty much failed to do that.” He added, “I’m really disappointed, particularly with the type of character that we demand from our players. I can excuse certain things, but I can’t excuse players being outworked and I thought that was really apparent.” Hounsell, who assumed leadership of Burton seven weeks ago following Mark Robinson’s dismissal, delivered harsh criticism towards nearly all participants in the defeat, with only forward Ben Whitfield and youth substitute Josh Taroni exempt from his most severe remarks. Hounsell stated, “I’m hard-pushed to find a good performance out there, if I’m honest.” He elaborated, “It’s pretty obvious when we have an academy player [Taroni] who comes on and plays 45 minutes and shows more endeavour and hard work than a lot of other individuals. I thought Ben Whitfield worked really hard tonight and showed some really good endeavour, so we don’t include him in that.” Hounsell explained that Burton’s ongoing struggle to avoid relegation, which currently places them second from the bottom of the league and nine points away from safety after 18 matches, was the impetus behind his decision to implement such extensive changes for the cup fixture. He commented, “It’s a shame we had to use this stage of the competition to probably do what we did, but the league has to take priority and we had a lot of players that needed a rest after a busy schedule.” He continued, “We do have lot of games coming up and we are going to have to rely on the squad, so it’s important that they put a marker down. They had the opportunity to do that and they can’t have any qualms going forward if they are not in the squad.”