Millers Away At Exeter – Preview

Rotherham United’s first game of the season sees them travel to take on Exeter City.

Both sides have new signings that could start although City look like being without Yanic Wildschutt, who was injured in their last pre-season friendly, and long term injured Demetri Mitchell while both Sonny Cox and Jay Bird are out with knee injuries. Likewise Rotherham will be without Andre Green who is still suffering with a ruptured Achilles tendon he sustained last October.

The Millers are likely to have former Grecians Cameron Dawson, Zak Jules and Sam Nombe in the squad while ex-Miller Ben Purrington looks to line up for the hosts.

Last season’s top scorer for Exeter, Reece Cole, should start with Rotherham Tom Eaves, who was the Millers top scorer, no longer at the club, next in line, Jordan Hugill, could play some part in the game.

‘We’ve prepared extremely well,’ Grecians Manager Gary Caldwell told their Official Site ahead of this game. ‘We’ve covered a lot of different things in terms of how we want to work and behave as a team this season and, as a whole, we are really happy with how pre-season has gone but we all have to turn up on Saturday, that’s players, staff and supporters, at half-past five.

‘Rotherham are a really good team and have assembled a really strong team. They have a fantastic manager who knows how to get out of this league. I think Rotherham are one of these teams who have to get success this season which brings a certain pressure. But we have to believe we can beat these teams and I think we have a group of players who can do that.’

Millers Manager Steve Evans told Radio Sheffield that this is probably the toughest League One ‘ever’. ‘We know how tough it’s going to be and you have to be ready to gain everything you possibly can this season. We have some characters in our dressing room who will hate losing more than they love winning. We know it’s going to be tough but we also know we can compete in the top group.

‘Exeter have a good manager in Gary Caldwell whose recruitment this summer has been really good. They signed one or two players we made an approach for. It’s a tough place to go with passionate home support. But we are taking a full away end so we know we’ll be loud and hopefully we’ll be proud at the end.’

The referee for this game is Paul Howard.