Ian Evatt felt Blackpool ‘deserved’ vital victory over Burton

Manager Ian Evatt felt Blackpool fully deserved their dramatic 1-0 victory over Burton at Bloomfield Road.

CJ Hamilton bagged a stoppage-time winner to help the Seasiders move out of League One’s bottom four and cut the gap between themselves and the Brewers to one point.

They were backed by a sold-out home crowd, as the club celebrated the recent anniversary of its 2019 homecoming fixture, with their strong support inspiring them to a vital win.

Evatt said: “It doesn’t matter when it comes, as long as it does.

“Hindsight is a wonderful thing in football. It was a must-win game, and a win-at-all-costs game, and we won it.

“It wasn’t pretty, and it wasn’t easy – the wind makes it difficult, but that’s something we have to get used to here.

“From minute one they tried to disrupt. They tried to slow everything down, and they slowed set plays and throw-ins down, and had players going down injured.

“It was obvious to me they were just trying to take the sting out of the stadium.

“For as scrappy as it was, we limited them to one shot in the whole game. Too often this season we haven’t kept clean sheets, but now that’s back-to-back clean sheets – and that’s crucial.

“As much as it was bitty, I still think we deserved to win. The fact we’re still together separates us from the rest and we have to make sure we maintain that.”

Burton boss Gary Bowyer also acknowledged the role the conditions played, while sharing his frustration with how his side executed in the final third.

He said: “It’s easy for me to assess as I’ve seen many games like this because of the wind machine here.

“It swirled around and didn’t really favour either team. The game itself wasn’t a great one.

“We didn’t do enough with the ball, we didn’t cross the ball enough, we didn’t test them enough. From that point of view, it’s really disappointing from us.

“Defensively, we limited them to one chance, but we then committed the sin of not doing the basics properly right until the end by letting the ball bounce, we then didn’t block the shot. All of those things are slightly disappointing.

“There’s a lot of development from the group and how they developed the occasion. We worked to that, and said at half-time it was about producing one moment.

“Like I said, I’ve seen many of these games decided by one moment; unfortunately for us we were on the wrong side of that moment – we didn’t do enough in the final third, I’ll be honest.”