Nombe ‘Not At Our Best’

Rotherham United striker Sam Nombe said that the team have to ‘dust themselves off’ and get back on the training ground after yesterday’s home defeat to Birmingham City.

Taking the mic after the two-nil loss the Millers number eight told Radio Sheffield, ‘Every defeat is a tough one to take but I don’t think we were at our best. As a collective I think we can do much better but, as a group, we have to keep carrying on believing. We need to have better quality on the ball and, myself, there are times when I need to retain it more so we can build off that.

‘We did start brightly, causing them a bit of disruption but we allowed them to get the first goal then the second deflated what we were doing and allowed them to have confidence throughout the rest of the game.

‘In past games we’ve created a lot of chances from our platform up top which allows us to build on that flow. But we didn’t have that momentum today like we’ve had in recent weeks.

‘We’ve got to keep on pushing each other in training, pushing each other to be better and expect more in demands and quality which we know we have and that way we can bring it back out on a Saturday. We’ve had that in games but haven’t had that finishing edge, including myself.

‘Today was an eye opener for ourselves and how we need to be better as a group.’

I don’t think that it’s the fact we lost at home to Birmingham but the manner we lost in – the roll over and die manner. Once City got on the front foot we didn’t seem to know what to do.

Back to the training pitch? Yes – but what they do on the training pitch is, hopefully, going to include shooting practice and winning the ball back.