After getting those vital three points on Wednesday night, against Blackpool, we headed to Rotheram to play in another Yorkshire derby. With Rotherham 11th in the table, we were looking for our second win in a row to get us closer to the play off zone. Dawson knows what he is doing now, he had a shaky start but now he has worked out a team that can gel. This was a very entertaining game, to say the least, goals came from both teams but it was us who finally won a game with pure dominance.
The squad for us had no changes from Wednesday, and clearly this should be the starting eleven for the fixtures coming up. It has taken a while to sort the team out but Dawson has finally formed a team that has gelled together. In my opinion, the problem with the previous squads, that both managers have tried, is that they are starting with all of the new signings and that is the issue. The new signings have only had training to try and play together, meaning that they have had no proper experience playing with one another. Keeping on most of the players who played last season was the right idea, as they know each other and they have some sort of idea on how every other player plays. I can say that this new line up is paying off because since we started with the squad, we have won both of our matches with a two goal cushion.
Every player on the pitch was energetic, eager and full of pace and they portrayed this throughout the whole of the match. Only a couple of mistakes were made and that is how Rotherham were able to score against us. The main mistake was, whenever we scored we dropped off straight after kick off giving the chance for the opposition to run at us, make a cross and score. Fortunately, this only happened twice and when we scored our fourth goal we only let one in and took control over the game. If we can take this kind of football to our home game, against Blackburn, on Saturday then we may have a chance at starting to rise higher in the table and, hopefully, get into that top six that our fans are hoping for.
We were extremely good in attack today and every player, when we were counter-attacking, was making runs and instead of making too many little passes around the box we made through balls and crosses. I like this style of football and I hope Dawson does not change it. Pressurising was on point today, and instead of not making challenges every player was eager to win the ball back and we successfully accomplished that without giving away a foul. The goals we scored today were not lucky and they came from the run of play, except one that came from a corner. I think that Christie scored the best goal and for me he was the man of the match. He did not just score a goal, he was everywhere on the pitch and made so many great passes. I could also say that every player was just as good as each other but Christie was the best man for me, despite his sloppy start earlier this season.
Defence was amazing, we did not make any major mistakes and we were quite tight making it hard for the Rotherham attack to break through us. In the previous games, we left too much space, we never marked anyone and we could not clear the ball. All of these worries have been resolved and I hope we can carry on like this for the rest of the season. The best player in defence was Greaves as he was getting back, and he made so many tackles to prevent the Rotherham players from getting into the box. Without Greaves we would have struggled in defence.
Our main players were brought on in the second half and we were still able to play well - Tufan was able to get a goal and Estupinan missed a sitter. The scoreline could have been greater, but Rotherham’s goalkeeper made a couple of great saves and we were unable to get some shots on target.
Our next game is Blackburn, at home, and I hope we put on the same performance for the home supporters that come to watch. Let's keep up this streak and with luck we get those three points.