Richardson ‘Start Of Game Disappointing’

Rotherham United Head Coach Leam Richardson said there was nothing that happened this afternoon that he didn’t expect.

Speaking to Radio Sheffield after the two-nil home defeat to Southampton Leam said, ‘They are probably one of the best teams in the league so you expect a healthy challenge but the start of the game was disappointing. We conceded at a set-play three or four minutes in which, obviously, gives them a lift in front of their fans and then it took us twenty odd minutes to gather our thoughts.

‘Southampton have come here with fantastic international players but you have to compete like we did in the second half but for the full game. The first twenty or thirty minutes wasn’t us. We can’t start games like we did but we know that.

‘We were more like ourselves in the second half – our decision making, we connected a lot more around the pitch. If you keep giving the ball away like we did in the first half you’ll get problems. but if we’d looked after the ball better, we could have caused them problems. We got into some good areas without having that final bit of quality.

‘There’s a lot of lads there who are learning together. We’ve got to train well and have a consistency in what we do, off the pitch and on the pitch and how we evolve as a team.’

The Millers brought in three players on Thursday and all three were on the bench today with just one, Femi Seriki, getting on. Asked if he thought it was too early to fetch them into the team, Leam answered, ‘We did a lot of work on Tuesday and Thursday regarding Southampton and they didn’t come in until late Thursday so didn’t train until Friday. And I think it’s unfair to throw the lads in and it’s important for them to see what we are doing which they will benefit from seeing.’ Ed Note (Jeez, they will all want to ‘go home’ seeing that first half!).

Cohen Bramall didn’t make the match today and it seems he will be out for a number of weeks with an ankle ligament injury. Let’s hope he is soon on the mend.

We did get better in the second half – we were quicker (it was all a bit ‘plodding’ in the first half) and won the ball more, tackled more and didn’t go backwards so much. But we really have to start like that. We also had shots on goal, which is an improvement over the last few weeks.

And can I just mention referee Sunny Sukhvir Gill who I thought had a very good game – though I’m not mentioning the official on the family stand side who I didn’t think had a very good game.