Rotherham away match thread

[Slippin cider]

Why is Pearson on crutches?

[Red-Robbo]

16 minutes ago, Slippin cider said:

Why is Pearson on crutches?

Back problem

[1960maaan]

1 minute ago, Red-Robbo said:

Back problem

Glad you said that, the guy on Sky said bad leg, I thought I was going mad.

[Davefevs]

5 hours ago, TV Tom said:

We got away with last night because Rotherham were rank, they scored with their only shot on target in two games, we played equally as bad last season away against teams slightly better than Rotherham and got beat, Cardiff, Swansea, Brum, Reading spring to mind, tbf i thought we weren't too bad in the second half although not creating much, the subs certainly made a massive difference against a tiring defence

Yep, but what do bad sides do?  They focus on disrupting their better (on paper) opponents with the hope of playing a numbers games on offence, ie hit enough balls into the final third with the hope that a ball will drop in the right place and they’ll score.  It’s crude.

When they had players like Barlaser, Crooks, Wiles to back up a twosome of Michael Smith and Ladapo their style had a mix of crudeness and quality - quality for that style, not pretty on the eye, but effective, e.g. Barlaser accurate passer, taker of set pieces, Crooks and Wiles physical run all day and Smith the target man to Ladapo’s on the shoulder.  And even they struggled and got relegated, but they gave sides like us - at the time, not prepared to fight - tough games.

Thankfully we aren’t easily turned over these days.

Last night felt a worse team totally, Rathbone and Tiehi the bits of quality but the playing style quite hopeless, the vain hope of finding Hugill in a scoring position.  All it did was force City deep.  And that just made in difficult for us to play our game (which is still evolving / finding it’s true identity) because we were starting so deep.

We ground it out, I think that deserves a bit of credit, especially after Saturday when the rhetoric was “City can’t defend under Pearson”, which hasn’t been true for 9 months.  We are much harder to breakdown these days.

Credit us for withstanding their tactic.

We did it with two CBs who quite a few have had a good moan about this season at certain points.

Back to your opening line, last night we just needed to be better than them.  We were.  I wonder what the three sides thought after failing to win at the NY Stadium - Preston (d), Norwich (l), Blackburn (d).

3 hours ago, Ian M said:

Clear handball from Bell, ref may have got this one right after all.

....but another 2 weeks closer to Big Rob returning 

Was just Rotherham being Rotherham and dragging their opponent down to their level. On their budget (must be the smallest in the Championship) they are very unlikely to have goals much above staying in the division so it's in their interests to turn home games into scrappy affairs which they often succeed at as evidenced from 1 defeat in 4 (Leicester) before our visit. Last season 2/3 of their opponents failed to win there. 

After Stoke anything less than a win would have felt deflating as a gap would be growing between us and the hope of a play-off spot. As it is, having missed Tommy for most of the season we currently sit 1 point off and can continue to hope.

Yeah, kinda backs up my thoughts above.

I wasn’t happy with our performance, but just imagine we’d had a ref who gave us a deserved pen, red carded Lembikisa, then gave another penalty for grappling Rob Dickie.  Imagine one who gave us free-kicks for Hugill running at Naismith on high balls, etc.

Decisions like that allow teams like Rotherham to play outside the rules.

[Red from afar]

Had a drink with a couple of Rotherham supporting friends before the game and their summary of the team was pretty much how it played out. Rathbone too good for them, some pacy players in the team but no quality up front to finish it off. Their main concern was their injury list which is apparently quite extensive.

Hugill spent most of the game trying to  foul Naismith. When he got away with it once that seemed to be his sole aim.

[transfer reader]

6 hours ago, MarcusX said:

Couldn’t see a thing of the first half incidents but on the highlights the bell one looks clear cut 

The Dickie one moments later, the defender had both arms wrapped around him, but also linked his hands together for extra grip when holding.

Less obvious too see than the Bell one, but a textbook example of what holding another player looks like.

[Mr Popodopolous]

34 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

Yep, but what do bad sides do?  They focus on disrupting their better (on paper) opponents with the hope of playing a numbers games on offence, ie hit enough balls into the final third with the hope that a ball will drop in the right place and they’ll score.  It’s crude.

When they had players like Barlaser, Crooks, Wiles to back up a twosome of Michael Smith and Ladapo their style had a mix of crudeness and quality - quality for that style, not pretty on the eye, but effective, e.g. Barlaser accurate passer, taker of set pieces, Crooks and Wiles physical run all day and Smith the target man to Ladapo’s on the shoulder.  And even they struggled and got relegated, but they gave sides like us - at the time, not prepared to fight - tough games.

Thankfully we aren’t easily turned over these days.

Last night felt a worse team totally, Rathbone and Tiehi the bits of quality but the playing style quite hopeless, the vain hope of finding Hugill in a scoring position.  All it did was force City deep.  And that just made in difficult for us to play our game (which is still evolving / finding it’s true identity) because we were starting so deep.

We ground it out, I think that deserves a bit of credit, especially after Saturday when the rhetoric was “City can’t defend under Pearson”, which hasn’t been true for 9 months.  We are much harder to breakdown these days.

Credit us for withstanding their tactic.

We did it with two CBs who quite a few have had a good moan about this season at certain points.

Back to your opening line, last night we just needed to be better than them.  We were.  I wonder what the three sides thought after failing to win at the NY Stadium - Preston (d), Norwich (l), Blackburn (d).

Yeah, kinda backs up my thoughts above.

I wasn’t happy with our performance, but just imagine we’d had a ref who gave us a deserved pen, red carded Lembikisa, then gave another penalty for grappling Rob Dickie.  Imagine one who gave us free-kicks for Hugill running at Naismith on high balls, etc.

Decisions like that allow teams like Rotherham to play outside the rules.

Talking of weak officiating Dave and assisting certain sides, how delightful is it to hear about Alex Neil moaning on soft fouls and time wasting! Could not make it up.

[1960maaan]

1 hour ago, transfer reader said:

The Dickie one moments later, the defender had both arms wrapped around him, but also linked his hands together for extra grip when holding.

Less obvious too see than the Bell one, but a textbook example of what holding another player looks like.

Just clipped this quickly. I added the slo mo the show where the Ref was.

 

 

 

[transfer reader]

17 minutes ago, 1960maaan said:

Just clipped this quickly. I added the slo mo the show where the Ref was.

 

 

 

Ref had a perfect view of the Dickie one.

 

And it's not even like he can say "well both were doing it"

[1960maaan]

4 minutes ago, transfer reader said:

Ref had a perfect view of the Dickie one.

 

And it's not even like he can say "well both were doing it"

I said in an earlier thread that I wasn't sure on the Refs view of Bell's, no excuse for the Dickie one. Specially as he had stopped the game before for pulling/pushing.