Rotherham United couldn’t make it twenty-two without defeat with Accrington Stanley scoring the only goal of the game at the yesterday.
A cold and wet Boxing Day saw more than two thousand fans travel to the Wham Stadium and saw the Millers have the better of the possession with fifty-two per cent. Not surprisingly the hosts won fifty-two per cent of the aerial duels while Rotherham had nine corners to Accrington’s six.
Both teams passing accuracy in their opponents half came out at forty-nine per cent with the Millers have ten shots at goal, four of which were on target and nine from inside the box. Stanley had six shots on target from fourteen.
Defence wise we conceded fourteen fouls to our host’s twelve with both teams having one player booked.
Personally I’m not sure how accurate the possession stats are as, it appeared to me sitting there, that more times than not we gave the ball away. Accrington are a really tall team and although I realise the pitch was very wet – rain, rain and more rain, so how surprised were we to see the sprinklers on when we got to the stadium plus again at half-time – but I fail to see why we kept lumping the ball into the air when it was pretty obvious our opponents would be there to head it away.
Two home games follow now so let’s get back to winning ways.
The Wham Stadium
League One
26/12/2021 4:00 pm
Attendance: 4870
Referee: Andrew Kitchen
| Accrington Stanley | Rotherham United | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| McConville | |||||||
| Savin | Johansson | ||||||
| Amankwah | Wood | ||||||
| Nottingham | Harding | ||||||
| Sykes | Ihiekwe | ||||||
| Clark | Ogbene | ||||||
| Hamilton | Ferguson (Miller 65) | ||||||
| Coyle (Butcher 53) | Wiles | ||||||
| Leigh (Pell 86) | Barlaser | ||||||
| Bishop | Rathbone (Lindsay 70) | ||||||
| Malcolm (O'Sullivan 62) | Smith | ||||||
| McConVille | Ladapo (Grigg 74) | ||||||
Substitutes |
|||||||
| Trafford | Vickers | ||||||
| Butcher | Edmonds-Green | ||||||
| Nolan | Sadlier | ||||||
| O'Sullivan | Grigg | ||||||
| Patrick | Lindsay | ||||||
| Pell | Kayode | ||||||
| Mansell | Miller | ||||||
Game Statistics |
||
| 14 | Goal attempts | 10 |
| 6 | On Target | 4 |
| 6 | Corners | 9 |
| 12 | Fouls | 14 |
| 1 | Yellow Cards | 1 |
| 0 | Red Cards | 0 |
| 48 | % | 52 |
I think it was very obvious why we were lumping the ball in the air ! A small pitch no time on the ball and constantly being closed down what else was there to do ??
Honestly, Ray, you could be right. But we were doing it from the start and I do think getting the ball on the floor would have helped. But, yes, Accrington had done their homework on us and, personally, I think they deserved the points.