Richardson ‘We Chucked All The Artillery At It’

Rotherham United Head Coach Leam Richardson said he thought his team was ‘good value’ in large parts after last night’s two-nil loss away to West Brom.

‘We’ve come to West Brom, who are in a really strong position, and chucked all the artillery on tonight,’ he told Radio Sheffield. ‘We were good value in large parts of the game but obviously goals change games as, sometimes, do outside influences.

The Millers had gone one down in the twenty-third minute but were still competing when a poor decision by referee Eltringham led to them going two down on the stroke of half-time. He gave a penalty for handball in the area – well having now seen in back a few times, plus seen still ‘photo’s of the incident (which I know the referee doesn’t have the opportunity to do) the incident definitely wasn’t in the penalty area and I’m very doubtful whether it was handball as much as ball-to-face.

Leam Richardson really didn’t want to be drawn into that decision saying, ‘There’s been quite a few incidents then apologies this year hasn’t there. People say when you’re down there you don’t get them but I don’t agree. Whether you are up there, down there or round about there you should get a consistency of level of competence. I get judged as equals in our organisation on what I do and I expect the same from other organisations.’

Midfielder Sam Clucas had no such qualms saying he ‘couldn’t believe’ the decision to give the penalty. ‘There’d been a bad decision before when a player had landed on me and he gave a foul against me which was baffling. Then he went and gave that (the penalty) and his words were ‘it was miles in the box’ so what do you do in that situation? When you get a decision like that go against you it’s an absolute shambles and shouldn’t happen at this level especially when you’ve got a referee, two linesman and a fourth official looking at it. I spoke to a couple of their players and they couldn’t believe it. But it’s done now and nothing is going to change it. We were frustrated and shouting in the dressing room at half-time but the Gaffer did well to come in and calm us down and told us to leave it to him and go out and win the second half and we put in a spirited performance in the second half.’

‘The first goal was disappointing,’ the Millers Boss said, ‘we should have met them on the sides quicker and for that one minutes lack of concentration good teams will punish you. But I thought we responded from it very well and were a threat on the counterattack most of the evening.’

Eighteen year old midfielder Ben Hatton made his debut for the Millers last night, coming off the bench for the final minutes, with his manager saying, ‘Congratulations to Ben for making his debut it’s a fantastic achievement and I’m glad I was able to give him his start. His hard work as a footballer starts now.’