Rotherham United Manager Paul Warne said that his team didn’t created enough second half chances at the Highbury Stadium this afternoon.
‘No offence to Fleetwood but I thought we were the team trying to win it. They were slowing the game down no end and I thought we were on the wrong end of a couple of decisions but I don’t think we created enough clear chances in the second half,’ he told Radio Sheffield after the one-nil defeat today.
Both teams had good chances in the first half and I think there could have been goals but for the goalkeepers. I agree that the hosts tried every trick in the book to slow the game down, falling down and having trainers come on when they were soon on their feet and up and running. But, hey, we should be used to that in today’s football. I also agree that some decisions made by the ref were a little strange – he pooh-poohed a penalty appeal and not two minutes later gave a free-kick twenty yards away for the self same foul – it was either one or the other Mr Lewis. On the other hand he also ignored quite a bit of their ‘going down’ although he didn’t produce a card for it.
Carrying on the Millers Boss said, ‘I blame myself and I probably could have been braver with my substitutes.’ Ed Note – Yep you certainly could. ‘But we didn’t have a Sads (Kieran Sadlier – who got injured in training yesterday) or a Mickel (Miller) on the bench that might have brought us something different. I was disappointed with our set-plays today and I don’t think we were aggressive enough attacking our set-pieces.
‘Overall I’m hugely disappointed that we lost, but we don’t have any divine right to win the game. We’ve half a season left and these are the places we need to come and pick something up. There are going to be times when things don’t go your way and whatever excuses you want to make you just have to dig down and get a result.
‘To have a good season you have to win in all sorts of different ways and today we didn’t find the way to do that.’
Talking about the ‘fans’ who interrupted the minutes silence today at the start of the game (and I use the word ‘fans’ loosely) and the ones fighting amongst themselves at the end of the game Warney said he was ‘hugely embarrassed’ how one or two individuals behaved today saying, ‘I know we would have offended some Fleetwood fans and that wasn’t our intention. I hope they don’t regard that as the character of all our fans because that definitely is not the case.’
The club has put out a statement apologising to Fleetwood saying –
Everyone at Rotherham United would like to wholeheartedly apologise to the players, staff and supporters at Fleetwood Town for the behaviour of a small minority of our fans during the minute’s silence ahead of Saturday’s game.
We totally condemn the actions of a number of individuals who disrupted the pre-match tribute, and reaffirm our association with the vast majority of supporters in attendance who observed it with great respect.
The actions of said individuals totally goes against the values that we pride ourselves on as a football club and we know that the tribute was incredibly important to everyone at Fleetwood Town.
