I hadn't been at the Huddersfield or Gillingham home games, but today's match promised more of the same. Both sides started brightly, Rovers hit the post early on from Davies and we also had a looping header onto the bar. The Millers looked threatening in attack, but were a bit of a shambles in defence and Rovers went ahead after they'd had about 5 attempts to clear, the ball came to Shane, who slotted home. The lead was doubled with an excellent header from Taylor and things looked rosy at half-time.
The second half was poor from us. We kept giving the ball away, for which the midfield must take some responsibility and had a couple of good opportunities to extend the lead, the best falling to Chrissy G, but didn't take them. Shuker was having a mare, didn't manage to get much right this afternoon, but the crowd seemed keener to get on the back of Steve Davies, who'd faded after a promising start. Carl Tremarco came on for him. Facey scored with a cross-cum shot, which looped over Joe Hart, who had an excellent debut for us. Cue a frantic last 10 minutes, which included a brilliant tip-over from a deflection off Goodison from Hart and a couple of the Rovers players falling out with one-another after another Rotherham free-kick, where the marking was slack.
When our squad's small anyway, don't think we're making the best use of what we've got. Ellison for Shuker and Harrison for one of the central midfielders would have been worth considering from the squad picked. Ideally, Ronnie will get over his apparent aversion to youth and put Mike Jones on the bench as an option when Shuker is playing so poorly.