Rotherham United suffered a late defeat away at Fleetwood yesterday which saw us tumble from top to third place in the table – but we do have games in hand of the top two, another but is that we have to win them.
So how did we go on at the bitterly cold Highbury Stadium on a pitch that looked very much worse for wear according to the stats?
Firstly the Millers had sixty per cent of possession and won fifty-seven per cent of the aerial duels – I prefer our play to mostly be on the grass but maybe it was a little more difficult yesterday than in other games.
The Millers had double the corners of our hosts with eight while our accuracy of passing in our opponents half came out at fifty-nine per cent. Attack wise we had sixteen shots at goal of which five were on target and of those shots fourteen were inside the box. Fleetwood managed four on target from nine shots with six of those coming from inside our box.
Fleetwood conceded thirteen fouls, the Millers two more while there were two yellow cards in the game both of those going to players from the Cod Army.
Which, putting it in layman terms, to me says, lots of possession with no end result – and not for the first time this season. I honestly thought we would come out for the second half beating Fleetwood for pace, making them do most of the running, tiring them and that didn’t happen. I thought we looked a bit jaded. I was expecting a couple more changes in the second half. I was expecting to see when Plan A came to nothing we would switch to Plan B. I was clearly expecting too much!
We get to go again on Tuesday night with Lincoln City visiting the New York Stadium – and, frankly, we must do better. And I’m sure that that Plan B is being worked on (I think . . . I hope).
Up The Millers.
Highbury Stadium
League One
15/01/2022 4:00 pm
Attendance: 3385
Referee: Robert Lewis
| Fleetwood Town | Rotherham United | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pilkington (90+5) | |||||||
| Cairns | Vickers | ||||||
| Johnston (Nsiala 45) | Ihiekwe | ||||||
| Andrew | Wood | ||||||
| Clarke | Edmonds-Green | ||||||
| Jules | Ogbene | ||||||
| Batty | Ferguson | ||||||
| Johnson | Barlaser | ||||||
| Camps (Matete 85) | Rathbone | ||||||
| Harrison | Wiles | ||||||
| Hayes (Pilkington 67) | Smith | ||||||
| Lane | Grigg (Kayode 45) | ||||||
Substitutes |
|||||||
| Crellin | Johansson | ||||||
| Boyle | Harding | ||||||
| Nsiala | Mattock | ||||||
| Matete | Odoffin | ||||||
| Pilkington | Lindsay | ||||||
| McMillan | Kayode | ||||||
| Morris | Ladapo | ||||||
Game Statistics |
||
| 9 | Goal attempts | 16 |
| 4 | On Target | 5 |
| 4 | Corners | 8 |
| 13 | Fouls | 15 |
| 2 | Yellow Cards | 0 |
| 0 | Red Cards | 0 |
| 40 | % | 60 |