Cambridge head coach Mark Bonner was frustrated after his side missed the chance to keep their fate in their own hands on the final day of the League One campaign.
The 1-0 defeat to Burton left Bonner’s side needing both MK Dons and Morecambe to drop points on the last day to have any chance of staying up.
“We wanted to go into Sunday with it in our control and it isn’t,” Bonner said.
“We have to respond and win our game firstly and hope other things go for us. Tonight is disappointing because of the opportunity we had to put it in our own hands.
“But if we are being honest six weeks ago we would have taken being in it on the last day.”
Burton’s Mark Helm scored the only goal with a deflected effort and Bonner felt his side contributed to their own downfall.
He added: “Their goal came off our own poor play and there are a few teams in the league you don’t want to go behind to and they are certainly one of them.
“Burton had a few good chances and will say they should have killed the game off, but they didn’t so we were always in the game.”
Striker Sam Smith thought he had equalised late on with a header saved by Burton goalkeeper Jordan Amissah, with Bonner unsure whether the ball had crossed the line.
“Either that is the best save I’ve ever seen or the ball has crossed the line,” Bonner said.
“I don’t know which but everyone was celebrating as if it had (crossed the line). Tough to see on the video and the replays but the shape of it looked like it had.”
With safety already secured Albion boss Dino Maamria was a happy man as his side reached a season-high 14th spot going into the final game.
“I thought it was a very good performance throughout,” Maamria said.
“We played some good football and got the balance right. We controlled the middle of the park. We scored one and could easily have got two or three.”
Maamria praised goalkeeper Amissah, making his first start since January, but reserved his top praise for match-winner Helm, who is finishing the season in really good form having joined from Burnley in January.
He added: “Jordi deserved his start. Although he hasn’t played, he has been a huge part of what we have been doing and getting that clean sheet is testament to him.
“John Brayford and Sam Hughes were superb at the back but what about Mark Helm? What a performance that is. He is a top, top player. He showed what he is capable of, and he is getting better and better.
“All in all, lots of positives tonight. We are getting better and better all the time.”
Derby seal Championship return with Carlisle win as Cheltenham drop to League Two
Derby County sealed a Championship return by beating already-relegated Carlisle United 2-0 at Pride Park on the final day of the League One season.
Derby knew a single point would end their two-year stay in the third tier of English football, with Bolton Wanderers waiting to pounce if the Rams did suffer a shock defeat.
However, such a slip-up never looked likely as Max Bird's powerful strike from outside the area put them ahead within five minutes, and James Collins added a close-range second on the hour mark to make certain of promotion.
Paul Warne's team finished five points behind Portsmouth, who clinched the title earlier this month, and five clear of Bolton – who needed a late equaliser from Cameron Jerome to draw 3-3 with Peterborough.
Bolton will face Barnsley in the play-offs as the Tykes were not punished for their 1-1 draw with Northampton Town, defeats for Blackpool and Lincoln City denying them the chance to gatecrash the top six.
Fourth-placed Peterborough will face Oxford United in the other play-off semi-final, as the U's clinched a 2-1 win over Exeter City to claim fifth place in the final reckoning.
Three of the four relegation places had already been decided before Saturday's matches, with Carlisle, Port Vale, and Fleetwood Town on their way to League Two.
Cheltenham will join them after Nick Freeman struck a 90th-minute winner in their 2-1 loss at Stevenage. Darrell Clarke's side needed a win to save themselves and send Burton Albion down in their place, but they were hit with a late sucker punch as their three-year stay in League One came to an end.
Garry Monk unhappy with penalty decision that cost Cambridge two valuable points
Cambridge boss Garry Monk was scathing of referee Will Finnie’s decision to award Wycombe a late penalty as the two sides recorded a 1-1 League One draw on Tuesday night.
Finnie penalised substitute Lyle Taylor seven minutes from time, allowing Luke Leahy to equalise and make Cambridge’s bid to avoid relegation go down to the final day.
A victory would have kept the U’s up and they led through Gassan Ahadme, despite illness and injury leading to Monk having only one fit centre-back available to him.
“It’s not in a million years a penalty,” Monk said afterwards.
“It’s got nothing to do with the players. It was taken out of our hands by a decision from an official that I think’s extremely poor. I’m not surprised that decision was given either, from the performance of the referee today.
“It is what it is, we’ve got to deal with it and the ramifications of it. We’re not in a place that we should have been and deserved to be tonight, where we were safe.
“In the second half, what more can you ask? We had some good chances tonight, we scored our goal. The bitter bit is not coming off with three points. We deserve to be in the situation where the job is done tonight.
“I’m really proud of them. They deserved to walk off this pitch tonight in front of our fans with the job done. We can feel deflated tonight but when we wake up tomorrow, we know what the job is.
“If we continue to show the amount of effort in what we’re doing then on Saturday we’ll get what we deserve, or what we did deserve tonight.”
Wycombe boss Matt Bloomfield was delighted to see his side make it 10 points from their last four away matches.
“We’ve played Shrewsbury, Port Vale – less so Carlisle because they were already relegated – and Cambridge. Teams that wanted points, needed points.
“The one thing I wanted to come away from every game is not being able to pick which team needed the points and which team didn’t.
“I wanted us to play with that intensity, that need to keep improving, the need to keep moving forward. It’s how we feel about ourselves. The boys are disappointed, they wanted to win tonight and I think they way we played showed that.
“You can’t win every game, we have to be very respectful of the way Cambridge played and performed but I think we did enough to win the game.
“First half we were excellent, it’s as dominant as we’ve been. The only slight disappointment was that we weren’t ahead. To show the character to go and get a penalty and come back, I thought we were very good.”
Darrell Clarke urges Cheltenham fans to get behind team in bid to stay up
Darrell Clarke has called for Cheltenham’s fans to travel in numbers as they bid to escape the drop in League One with a final-day win at Stevenage.
Tuesday’s 2-0 home victory over Peterborough kept their hopes alive, sealed by first-half goals from Joe Nuttall and Matty Taylor, leaving them two points behind Burton.
They must win at Stevenage and hope Burton fail to beat Fleetwood and or Cambridge lose to Port Vale.
“I thought the boys were magnificent tonight and we needed to be,” Clarke said.
“Now, we take it to the last game of the season. It was a really good atmosphere tonight and the fans were great so hopefully we can get as many of them as possible down to Stevenage and fill the away end because we need everybody there trying to cheer us on for a win.
“When I came in we had one point and no goals, so of course I would have snapped your hand off for this position with one game left, with 44 points.
“The lads have been magnificent over a period of time and there is a real togetherness in the group, even when we took a lot of knocks recently.
“We have bounced back and found that really good performance. We need to find that last really good performance in the last game of the season.”
With their play-off spot already secured, Posh boss Darren Ferguson rested a host of regulars, making seven changes.
And his youthful side were blown away in the first half by the Robins, who knew anything other than a win meant relegation with one game to play.
Nuttall reacted quickest to bundle the ball over the line from close range after goalkeeper Nicholas Bilokapic could only parry Liam Sercombe’s shot in the 11th minute.
The lead was doubled 10 minutes later when Taylor brought down a ball forward from Lewis Freestone and applied an expert finish.
Taylor crashed a shot against the post in the 32nd minute after Liam Kinsella’s pass and Elliott Bonds forced Bilokapic into a smart save two minutes later.
Posh threatened through Ricky-Jade Jones before half-time, but they were second best and Taylor and Bonds both forced Bilokapic into evasive action in the second half.
At the other end, Luke Southwood parried Jonson Clarke-Harris’ shot in the 58th minute and kept out a late header from the centre forward.
Ferguson admitted his team struggled from the first whistle.
“They got on top of us and we couldn’t sustain any sort of control,” he said.
“The goals were terrible goals to give away, you can’t give goals away like that.
“We spoke about the first 20 minutes before we left the hotel – we had to see that through and try and make sure we dealt with them because we knew they’d be straight down our throats and they were and we conceded two soft goals.
“There were certain things we worked on that we didn’t do well enough, but the goals were poor and you can’t give goals away like that, especially tonight because they got so much energy from it.
“The longer the game went on and they hadn’t scored, the more chances we were going to get. We knew we had pace in behind and I have to say we had five or six very good opportunities as well.
“Congratulations to Cheltenham, they go into Saturday still with a chance of staying up.”
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