I hate playing Rotherham. It's nothing to do with Steve Evans or any of their present players. It's nothing to do with any of their former managers or stars (do Rotherham have 'stars'?) - It's that ever since I watched Shaun Goatee and his mates overpower us at some point in the 1990s, Rotherham seem to do the same thing every time we play them. They're big, elbowy, well drilled and score at least a couple of irritatingly clinical but equally unspectacular goals and go off back to South Yorkshire with three points to compensate for the decimation of the steel industry and the fact that no one really actually knows where or what Rotherham is, even if, as I have, you've been several times.
I know statistically this is not true. I know I've been at games where we've cruised past the merry Millers like tangerine jet fighters accelerating past a tired old drayhorse. It's just that makes no difference. Playing Rotherham is always, in my mind, some burly lads who could probably hold their own in Rugby League pissing all over the more cultured and silken skills of the tangerine wizards.
Let tonight be different! - Let us football the big inland Fleetwood to death!
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It feels like there's no one here. The players run out, not to the roar of the coliseum but to the half hearted applause of a county cricket match. There are, though, some early Pool chances and we move the ball fairly sharply and smoothly at times. Sammy Silvera is the pick of the players on both sides, taking it well, slipping through tight spaces and driving directly. A nice move ends in a far post cross and I audibly curse Fletcher not sticking his head on it. He just doesn't seem able to throw himself at the ball - he might not have scored if he had, but he never seems to gamble. A far post cross from the other side sees CJ showing off his supremely accurate impression of a year 6 kid heading a football and the ball plops wide tamely.
Rotherham rouse themselves and lump it into the mixer. Twice Offiah makes excellent interventions and we escape. We then have some long range efforts, Carey touches it off and the bright Silvera hids a low backlift sharp effort wide. I give it an earthy 'ooooooh' even though I know it wasn't going in because it's a nice effort. The next one is clever work from Morgan. We've lumped it forward, the ball comes back out and seeing the keeper off his line, he tries to chip him, with a diving header - which incredibly almost works. Finally, Sonny is fed by Silvera, takes one touch and absolutely leathers it. There's nothing I want more than for this to burst the net, but instead it nearly wipes out a defender and goes for a corner.
In between the above, Ollie Casey goes down, gets up, gets beaten immediately by a simple ball over the top, (forcing Tyrer into a good stop, rushing out to get a touch on the resulting shot) and then goes off. This isn't good news at all but I suppose it gives Jordan Gabriel a chance to show he's the player he used to be still. His chances have been limited this year and it seems sad that someone who was tearing it up in the championship to a point where a good money move away seemed almost certain is now languishing on a mid table league one bench.
Finally, the best chance of the half falls to Bees. Say what you like about Bees, he does score goals - but today, he gets a double bite and somehow the cherry falls from his mouth and lies squashed on the floor. He's on angle, maybe ten yards out and initially he goes for a weird, placed toe poke effort that may or may not be an attempt to pass the ball or shoot but ends up being nothing much at all. The ball comes back to him though and this time he smashes it. The net billows! There's a cheer! The celebrations are strangled at birth as we all realise the ball has struck the wrong side of the netting.
Rotherham have a couple of chances at the end of the half that I don't really remember and it's time for the spectacular Bloomfield half time show (listening to the PA that you can't hear whilst some subs lethargically knock the ball back and forth)
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I think we've been marginally the better side, but it's not a great game. We look unthreatening up front and whilst some of our team look pretty neat and tidy, overall, we've struggled to put too much together.
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This half starts with me thinking 'Have about 1500 of our supporters decided Man City vs Real is a better bet than this?' - I can't personally see why you'd stay at home in the warmth to watch the world's best players battle it out in a high stakes knockout game when you can watch a pretty much no stakes league 1 game between two sides low on overall technical ability in a night that is becoming increasingly cold as each minute ticks by. At some point CJ and Ash Fletcher conspire to make a 5 yard pass look impossible. Gabriel puts the ball out of play as if kicking it is something he hasn't had the chance to practice. Albie castigates himself when what would have been a clever flick into space on another day is instead a flick into touch. Who needs Vinny Jr and all of that, when you've got this feast of football to devour?
Rotherham have a ten minute spell where they seem to be able to cross at will and do so pretty well - it looks as if they're inevitably going to make the pressure pay at some point... Husband gets absolutely dominated at far post as they get really too close for comfort and Bruce goes to the bench. It's needed as we've really not come out for the second half.
I can't initially work out what he's done. He seems to have gone for a 4411 approach, with Carey behind Ennis. I was surprised he took both Beesley and Fletcher off together - whilst the big man and big man approach didn't really work, I thought it was worth a bit of Ennis with a partner - but otherwise I'm glad to see Apter and co on the pitch bringing some technical ability to what has not been a very joyous party so far.
We then move into a spell of end to end football. When I say 'end to end' what I mean is, the ball goes to one end, there's a failed effort on goal and then about 4 minutes of bad tempered play happens, then it goes to the other end.
We carry up pitch but with no one to aim at we shoot from miles away and generally hit their defenders. Apter is direct and breaks at pace several times but to no avail. We look less of a threat if anything despite definitely having more skill on the pitch. The evening is kind of summed up by Carey breaking, exchanging a one two with Apter and then crossing, only for the scrambled clearance to hit him and turn what seemed like certain continued pressure into a goal kick. The apathy in the crowd is summarised by the fact the Rotherham keeper doesn't get much shit when he does an obviously planned fall over so his team can chat with big Steve about their evil plans.
Tyrer keeps making some quite good saves. There's a terrific dive to the left across the full width of his goal and a really superb low stop which evokes the 'gets down well for a big lad' as he plunges to his right. As much as he can look timid and uncertain at times, at others, he's a genuinely very good keeper who I think can learn to command his box more. He has the raw elements to be very good at this level and games are doing him good.
I like the Rotherham no 8 a lot. He's exactly what we don't have. He's from no remarkable pedigree but he's aggressive and gives the centre halves (who again play well) a difficult time. On one of their many breaks from our tepid attacking play, he holds the ball up with ferocious wrestling tenacity and then rolls the otherwise immaculate Baggot and charges 30 yards at pace, crosses the ball across the face of goal, cutting out Tryer and the defenders in the process but somehow they don't score. Our strikers should watch that on repeat - how to force something to happen with sheer effort alone...
We muster a response of a further pair of runs where we slide it across for no one to gamble. It all looks wrong. The formation switch has thrown us - We keep getting up the pitch then knocking it back to Evans to swing in, but he doesn't, because there's only the tiny Ennis there so we go square and repeat as if hoping someone might appear to receive the cross we want to swing in.
Late on, Evans cracks one from distance that draws a decent save and Rotherham then dominate the rest of injury time, largely because we don't seem capable of attacking coherently and keep giving it away.
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The way I've written it up, it feels quite eventful when I skim over it. It didn't feel like that on the night, but I'm not rewriting it because, frankly it has been a titanic effort reliving a game that never got going. If there's a match that sums up the sense of malaise at the club, this was it. The atmosphere was as flat as you can comprehend and whilst the players tried hard, it was obvious we didn't really have the quality to control the game. Rotherham were Rotherham - but they weren't a particularly good version of Rotherham.
Bruce got it wrong tactically, but when he adjusted things (and to his credit, he made sweeping changes fairly early) it didn't really have any great impact. I found it odd that he took off both the bigger players and went for Ennis with Carey as a link player but then, I'm not going to criticise him for shifting formation - managers get it wrong sometimes and had we stuck to 442 slavishly, I'd probably have moaned at that too. I don't want to sound like a broken record, it's still hard to see how the way we play is going to regularly succeed without a tough tackling and physically dominant midfielder as every single midfielder we have is better with that kind of player to free them up.
Overall, the apathy feels tangible. The crowd was subdued. At times I literally yawned. We all know the finances of football are mad - but when the club raises prices and justifies it in terms of the playing squad and the next January window resembles more of a firesale than anything else, people are going to feel flat. I'm not against the principle of 'less is more' and Rome isn't built in a day and all of that - but having pulled in a massive fee for Joseph and let multiple players go (including several high earners) it is sad that we enter February with a squad that still looks fundamentally incomplete, especially when what we need is a bit of physicality in the middle of the pitch - That's a quality that is not in short supply in the lower leagues. I don't doubt that Silvera, Ennis and Bloxham improve us - but they don't improve us enough to make it seem likely a promotion push will happen and therefore we're left with football for football's sake to entertain us - and last night was really dismal if you wanted to just enjoy the spectacle.
I'm left wondering again what we're doing here. I don't mean Steve Bruce - because he's built up too much credit for one misguided selection to change that. I mean the club as a whole - because we seem to have trod water now for quite a long time and last night was the epitome of that - no lack of effort - but without a flash of magic, we couldn't find a way to win. We've come down from the Championship and never really looked anything like a Championship side in waiting - we've reverted to being a league 1 side and last night was exactly that essence of a crap league 1 game between two flawed mid table sides who canceled each other out. Is that what we are? Are we going to continue to do 'just enough' and call it 'ambition' and get tetchy when that is questioned or are we doing something over a longer term? It would help a lot to know, instead of just guessing - because from here, it looks an awful lot like the enthusiasm behind the scenes has run out - and if that's a misguided interpretation, then I'd love to know why.
I always expect the worst vs Rotherham. This was in some ways worse than I expected.
Onward
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