Thirty-two minutes. That was how long Rotherham United’s last Championship stand lasted.
Having fought so hard to stay in the second tier last May, the Millers have been caught badly out of their depth this season, barely surviving longer than the last of the Easter eggs.
A working week that was supposed to start with relegation ended with it instead, confirmed by a 1-0 defeat at home to Plymouth Argyle.
The transfer policy that allowed Rotherham to assemble a major portion of their team with the football equivalent of broken biscuits and their inadequate infrastructure have now caught up with them. They failed to name a fill bench for the countlessth time this season.
Rotherham, one of just two teams with Plymouth that haven’t played in the top division, would not belong in the Championship if it were just about balance sheets.
Never mind that they are punching above their weight; this season they have underachieved, hurting themselves with a treatment room that is overcrowded and weak form that even by their previous standards at this level is.
To ensure that they have a little more longevity when their yo-yo existence propels them back up to this level, they need to make up for the underinvestment in the less glamorous components that make the difference.
The fans of Miller, who have been wildly vacillating between the camps for the past few years, are not fooled. When the final whistle blew, a lot of people had left, but some of the remaining ones booed their displeasure, drowned out by 1,005 away fans enjoying their team’s promotion to 19th place at the conclusion of what had threatened to be an awful week for them as well.
They sang with defiance, “We are staying up!”
The DJ’s words, “This is how it feels to be lonely, this is how it feels to be small, this is how it feels when your world means nothing at all,” scarcely improved the spirits of the home-stricken people.
Although they are only one point over the dotted line before kickoff, Plymouth, who fired their manager and appointed director of football Neil Dewsnip in his place at the beginning of the week, are not exactly stellar.
With right wing-back Seb Revan shooting wide after moving the ball forward and Sam Nombe taking a deep shot at a defender, Rotherham got off to a stronger start.
shoots on target, not shoots themselves, were the issue. Sam Clucas got one in, but it was so flimsy it was practically a pass.
Hakeem Odoffin, on the other hand, was playing like a center-back in an emergency situation. He made a terrific slide tackle on Callum Wright and came back incredibly strong after mishandling a pass that was allowed to cross to the inside-left.
In the seventeenth minute, Plymouth created a goalmouth scramble, but Ryan Hardie’s clumsy header let Wright down when he was in far too much crossing space on the right side. Not too long after, the forward ran the ball out of play from a favourable angle.
But just after the half-hour mark, Revan generously let a cross from Morgan Whittaker go over his head, and Bali Mumba made the conversion to give Rotherham the lead.
The location reeked of resignation after that. It should come as no surprise that this relegation has been up for a while.
Although the Millers’ decision to eventually go with Richardson to replace Matt Taylor in December somewhat uplifted the atmosphere, his already dismal points-per-game ratio has gotten worse.
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