Evans ‘Nobody Is Hurting More Than Me’

Rotherham United Manager Steve Evans first blamed the weather (although he did say for both teams), the fact that ‘big players’ are missing, illness in the camp (though he did credit ‘five or six’ players who weren’t fit to play but put on a shirt and went out there) after the one-nil defeat at Crawley on Saturday.

‘You can imagine how disappointed we are,’ the Millers Boss told the Official Site. ‘We were a bit in disarray this morning – Sam Nombe and Liam Kelly ill, we sent Ben Hatton home today ill, Reece James dropped to the bench because he’s ill. Fans will say it’s an excuse but that’s the real world, that’s the facts. We need to clear the camp out for a couple of days because there’s a bad virus in it.

‘We missed big chances in the first half, Jono (Clarke-Harris) should have done better with his header and Esapa (Osong) should have done better when he’s through in the box and then there was the biggest chance of the season right at the end which is hard to accept that anyone could miss that chance.

‘This is a tough place to come but we should be good enough to come here and deal with it.

‘But it’s not just today it’s over a run of weeks where our performance levels are not where they should be. We shouldn’t be where we are, we should be winning football matches. Reality is that performances haven’t been at a level where they need to be. Certain players performed really well today considering the conditions but five or six players looked, to me, as though they were going through the motions and if you’re doing that you aren’t going to win football matches.

‘We’ve got to work hard on the training ground and I can assure the fans we are working as hard as we possible can be. Fortunately, we’ve got ten days to get back on the training ground. It’s now or never and we have to step up for the month of December.’

Pointing out that the Millers form, at present, is relegation form, Steve Evans replied, ‘We aren’t going to get relegated. We’ve been in a lot of these games and it’s gone at the wrong side of us.

‘Nobody is hurting more than me.’