Warne Had To Speak Some Half-Time Truths

Rotherham United Manager Paul Warne admitted his team weren’t at ‘their best’ this afternoon despite getting a two-nil away win over Sheffield Wednesday.

Speaking after the game at Hillsborough the Millers Boss told Radio Sheffield that he wasn’t buzzing but pleased we’d won, saying, ‘Sheffield Wednesday are really good at home and I don’t know how we got in at nil-nil at half-time. At half-time I had to tell my players a few home truths and I thought they were playing like the underdogs which I wasn’t keen on. We gave the ball away too much, we looked anxious. I told them that they can’t live in fear and had to go for it because that’s how we play. I asked them to play with more character, more belief. And I thought we had more impact in the middle of the pitch in the second half.’

Warney went on to say that he was frustrated because our front two weren’t getting anything to feed off in the first half – and he’s right. I don’t think we had many crosses, if any, that went into our two forwards while I also agree with him that we looked frightened to lose – and you can’t play like that because, in my humble opinion, that’s how you make silly mistakes, lose games. I also think we have to look at that pitch we played on today – it seemed to take us a while to get used to it, work it out. In the first minutes of the second half I saw a back pass to our ‘keeper which I held my breath over because it stuck in the mud with a home defender bearing down on it. But, once we worked out we did better when we played on the strip that had grass on it we got more into our rhythm.

‘We got a good goal off a set-piece and did some dogged defending while riding our luck on numerous occasions,’ said Warne. ‘Freddie (Ladapo) scoring was really good, I thought his performance was excellent. I know putting him into the team will have caused abuse from some of our fans but I get paid to make those decisions and I thought he caused them a problem, as did Smudge (Michael Smith) who scored a good goal.

‘We kept a clean sheet and found a way to win, the lads were putting their bodies on the line and it was a good three points. But we will have to play better against Wigan.’