Big Match Verdict - Play-offs now the likely destination for Huddersfield Town

Yet German duo David Wagner and Christopher Schindler wisely refused to get drawn into promotion talk as the season enters its crunch phase.

Victories for Newcastle and Brighton and Town’s last-gasp defeat to the Brewers have left Wagner’s men nine points adrift albeit with a game in hand.

So is it time to take the foot off the throttle and protect key players ahead of what looks certain to be a play-off battle?

Neither head coach Wagner nor central defender Schindler would have any of it, sticking to the mantra that they concentrate solely on themselves over the last eight games of the regular season.

They are eight points clear of seventh-placed Sheffield Wednesday, the only side before Saturday to have prevented Town from scoring at home in the Championship this season.

It is avoiding the fate of the Owls, who dropped out of the top six with a draw at Oakwell, which concentrates Schindler’s thoughts.

“It’s not play-offs, it’s eight games to go,” he asserted. “As soon as we have enough points that we can’t be seventh we can talk about the play-offs. Now everything is possible and I don’t look too much at the table, I focus on Norwich now.

“Catching Brighton is not a topic for us. We look to ourselves. We have to win our games and if we win our games then we can maybe watch the table and see what the others did. If we don’t win then we can’t.”

Wednesday’s home game is just as important to Norwich, who find themselves seven points off the play-offs after defeat at Aston Villa.

Schindler, one of a few Town players to be on top of their game during Burton’s historic first visit to Huddersfield, continued: “We have no choice about not getting too down because the next game is on Wednesday so there is no time to be too upset. It will be a really hard game against Norwich, a really good team.”

Central defender Schindler conceded that if Town were not going to win against a side who employed five at the back but, importantly, two up front throughout, they should have ensured they did not lose.

However, going all-out for the victory, they left Burton with two on one on the break in the sixth minute of stoppage time and Marvin Sordell, a threat throughout, broke through the challenge of Chris Lowe beyond the halfway line, burst down the middle, drew goalkeeper Danny Ward to set up a tap-in for Jackson Irvine.

It completed a great week for Irvine, rested to the bench after netting his first goal for Australia in their World Cup qualifier against the UAE, a game which Town’s Aaron Mooy missed through suspension, enabling him to return to camp early.

Mooy was impeccable with his play-making yet his team-mates struggled to break down the Brewers defence as Wagner’s rotation policy for once failed to pay dividends.

Those who had come in and performed so admirably during Town’s FA Cup run-in failed to step up to the plate against a side battling to avoid the drop and employing stalling tactics to knock the hosts out of their stride.

It forced Wagner, shorn on Saturday and for the next week of injured Chelsea frontman Izzy Brown, to bring on Nahki Wells and Elias Kachunga perhaps earlier than he had wanted.

Collin Quaner, the arrowhead of the attacking diamond, was given longer but he fluffed a great chance when Mooy had been blocked and made way for Philip Billing.

The young Dane’s long throw ability prompted both Schindler and defensive partner Michael Hefele, who had seen one header headed off the line, to venture forward before Burton broke from it for the smash-and-grab winning goal.

They had threatened to cause an upset as soon as Dean Whitehead, replacing neck victim Jonathan Hogg, had received a second yellow for an alleged elbow in the 88th minute, but the warnings went unheeded.

Schindler reflected: “At the end, with Deano suspended (sent off) we should have taken the draw and kept a clean sheet but we made it so easy for them. They wanted nothing and got everything.

“Sometimes in the final third we made things too complicated and kept the ball too long. We made wrong decisions and that is why we did not create many chances.”

It could have been a different story had referee Scott Duncan awarded a penalty early on when overlapping Town full-back was pushed to the ground by Tom Flanagan in the area.

Then, of course, the same Burton player had legitimate claims of a spot-kick of his own when he was tripped by Lowe so perhaps justice was done when his appeal went unheeded.

The referee missed several unsavoury challenges, Hefele being particularly fortunate as Kyle McFadzean went sprawling, and tempers finally boiled over in the Burton area, leading to Whitehead’s dismissal, which sees him miss Wednesday’s game.

Huddersfield Town: Ward, Smith, Hefele, Schindler, Lowe; Whitehead, Mooy; Lolley (Kachunga 55), Payne (Wells 55), Van La Parra; Quanner (Billing79). Unused substitutes: Coleman, Hudson, Holmes-Dennis, Cranie, .

Burton Albion: McLaughlin, Brayford, Mousinho, McFadzean, Turner, Flanagan; Christensen (Akins 76), Kightly (Irvine 63), Murphy; Woodrow (Varney 68), Sordell. Unused substitutes: Bywater, Dyer, McCrory, Naylor.

Referee: S Duncan (Newcastle).