Rotherham United’s record in 23/24 suggested they were one of the weakest Championship sides of recent years. Their twenty seven points was seventeen less than we got in finishing bottom last season, but their last Championship game for at least two seasons saw them beat us 5-2 as they were helped along the way with some desperately poor City defending. That embarrassment, and what it suggested for our future, was almost universally ignored as we sold our best defender and bought poorly from the proceeds, during the summer, but that’s for another story – for now, I want to concentrate on Rotherham.
Their manager was the experienced Steve Evans who you can safely say is not a favourite of mine, but, having been appointed quite late in the season, he could not be blamed for the relegation. Evans seemed to be an ideal man to guide Rotherham to what was historically a quick return to the higher level for the team that has to be seen as the biggest yo yo club between League One and the Championship in recent times.
However, the season never really took off for Rotherham, they never got themselves into a challenging position and ended up in an undistinguished thirteenth with Evans losing his job following a 4-0 home loss to relegation bound Crawley in late March.
Despite their relegation with a very low number of points, Rotherham were thought to be among the promotion favourites a year ago before a ball was kicked. However, their nondescript 24/25 campaign, has certainly impacted on perceptions of them this time around and, if anything, the pundits had Rotherham more likely to depart the division by being relegated, rather than promoted, this time around.
So far, Rotherham have a 2-1 opening day home win over a Port Vale side that had to play an hour with ten men, a 1-0 loss at Stevenage and a League Cup win at Salford on penalties following a 0-0 draw which is not a bad return, but hardly enough to get those who didn’t rate them when they offered their predicted League One table to change their minds.
Rotherham’s failure to challenge at the top last season (plus that of far more fancied Yorkshire rivals Huddersfield who reacted to their relegation with Rotherham by spending pretty heavily, only to fade away really badly in the second half of the season to finish tenth) surely offers a more realistic outline of how our season could pan out than what happened to the other relegated side, Birmingham, who bought themselves the title with a record number of points.
As another week gets towards its end and August enters its second half, the time for City to follow the Birmingham example is fast running out. Returning to the real world now, increasingly, it seems clear that, in typical fashion, Vincent Tan and co are switching from one extreme to the other.
An atmosphere where the club’s Academy was virtually ignored as we went for mediocre journeymen in their late twenties or thirties has changed this year to an almost complete reliance on home produced youngsters whereby the twenty eight year old who started against Peterborough in our opening game was five years older than his next most senior team mate!
Neither scenario is right for successful team building and it seems to me that weaknesses that linger over from last season need players brought in from outside to address them successfully. However, with just the one loan signing so far, it’s looking increasingly clear that the only way we sign players in this window is on the proceeds from the sale, or saved wages, of players who have not yet left the club – I think it’s fourteen who have left either permanently or on loan now, but that doesn’t seem enough to allow Vincent Tan to sanction any buys yet.
It’s against this backdrop that I notice that the majority of on or off line pundits are saying we’ll beat Rotherham this weekend. That, more than anything, makes me concerned for the outcome of the match, because, especially in recent years, home games where we’re widely tipped to win seldom end well!
On to the quiz then, the usual seven questions on our next opponents..
60s. Born in.a place that hosts test cricket, but not league football, this forward, nicknamed “Ankles” was the only Rotherham player ever to win an England under 23 cap. He played for three clubs in a career shortened by injury that ended in his late twenties – Rotherham were the first of those clubs and he played most games for them. When he moved on after four years in which his scoring rate was better than a goal every other game, it was to go nearer to home for a decent sized fee for the times. Now in the First Division, he didn’t really sink or swim, he played in about half of the league games his new club played in the next four seasons and goals came at a reduced, but still useful, rate. On the subject of nicknames, he was indirectly responsible for the name given to an England international following a foul by him on our man in a game against Blackpool. His final transfer meant that he played the whole of his career in the eastern half of England as he dropped a division to play for a side that would seen reach the First Division for the first time. However, the promotion arrived too late for Ankles who had succumbed to an injury suffered just over a year before they went up and had already announced his retirement. Who am I describing?
70s. Described as a calm, cultured and thinking footballer, this defender made his first team debut for his home town club over four hundred miles away on mainland Europe. Initially, a reserve, injury to a first choice centreback allowed him.into the first team for the best part of a season and international recognition followed. However, a combination of the return to fitness of the regular centreback and the emergence of a youngster who could also play in that position meant that he became surplus to requirements and he was sold to a northern outpost which last weekend marked their first appearance in unwelcome surroundings for a good while with an impressive away win. However, the move did not work as he found it hard to break into a team that would celebrate a very unlikely promotion in the not too distant future. While his club prospered, he was loaned to a barracks and then was sold to Rotherham where he would play close to a century of games over the next three seasons before the manager who gave him his first game almost a decade earlier signed him to play for a club close to home. Who is he?
80s. Wounding, initially in Oxford, has occurred. (5,7)
90s. Influential 1930s comic book hero (kind of) finds himself playing up front for Rotherham!
00s. What two clubs are missing from this list?
Aston Villa
Torquay
Port Vale
Burnley
Rotherham
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Ipswich
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Norwich
Huddersfield
Ipswich
10s. North of the border church with outsize limb!
20s. The narrator of this children’s series from the 70s thats title featured a slight variation on this player’s first name died only this week, while the player’s surname means tricks or deceptions. Who is the player and for one of those occasional bonus points for which you win nothing at all, who was the narrator?
Answers to follow:
