Those Stats – Millers v Gills

Rotherham United carried on their unbeaten run yesterday evening when they beat Gillingham five-one at the New York Stadium to keep their place at the top of League One.

But are the stats as favourable as the score line?

The Millers had fifty-nine per cent of the possession last night and won seventy per cent of the aerial duels as well as having eight corners to Gillingham’s one.

Our passing accuracy in our opponents half came out as fifty-nine per cent, the visitors getting forty-three per cent and we had three hundred and twenty-nine passes to the Gills’ two hundred and fifty-two.

Of the twenty-eight shots we had on goal seven were on target – Paul Warne mentioned in his post-match interview that we should have scored many more goals and he’s right isn’t he. And, to be honest it wasn’t that their ‘keeper made that many saves, some, yes, but it was our players who put the ball high or wide. Luckily, that didn’t matter in the end – and we even had the luxury of a penalty miss. The visitors had one shot on goal which went in.

We conceded nine fouls to the Gills’ sixteen and we didn’t have any yellow cards while our visitors had one yellow (for time wasting – and it could have been more in my opinion) and the same player was then sent off (bet he regretted not taking the throw-in quicker!)

Personally I thought Gillingham had the better of the first forty-five minutes and I feel that we were lucky to go in two-one up at half-time. But we were almost unplayable in the second half in conditions that were less than favourable – which all adds up to a winning team.