Hasselbaink's Great Escape was superb but overall, Gary's perhap better still

BURTON Albion don't do routine seasons, do they?

- By COLSTON CRAWFORD

Well, not recently. For good or for bad, in the last decade, there have been two promotions, two years in the Championship and now four escapes from relegation in League One.

That just leaves room for a couple of “normal” seasons, after relegation from the Championship when the club consolidated under Nigel Clough, not threatening to be involved at either end of the table.

For many clubs, that is the norm, season after season. Good or bad, we usually get some drama at the Pirelli Stadium.

The four escapes have all been different, all completed with different men in charge.

People are saying the latest, just completed under Gary Bowyer, is the best of the four.

"He sprinkled belief on everyone," said Udoka Godwin-Malife of Bowyer.

"We were on our knees," captain Ryan Sweeney admits now. The skipper spent a good bit of the season coming out and facing the music with the media when things went wrong.

Now, football is far too full of hyperbole. And we all tend to have short memories so when people say this has been the greatest of the great escapes, it makes sense to question it, to remember the others; the euphoria at the time and the despair with how low things got before salvation.

The only real contender that could be considered as “better” than the Bowyer Escape is the first under Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink.

I’m not sure that the club had been at such a low ebb, in the last 40 years at least, as when he came in with Dino Maamria for the New Year in the 2020-21 season.

Burton were thrashed 5-1 at home by Oxford United as Hasselbaink watched.

Burton had only two wins when Hasselbaink came in, just as they had when Bowyer came in

It could have been 10 and it was the lowest of days.