Frustration for Leam Richardson despite Rotherham United ending losing run
The bottom-placed Millers showed character to hit back from two successive 5-0 Championship away losses to keep a clean sheet in a 0-0 draw in the all-Yorkshire showdown at AESSEAL New York Stadium.
But they failed to press home their advantage when the visitors were hit by Sorba Thomas's second-half dismissal, leaving Richardson feeling a degree of frustration.
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Hide Ad“I am obviously disappointed with the end result with them going down to ten men,” the head coach said. “Our habits have got to be better.
“The positives are that it was a clean sheet in a derby and we were competitive. There was a good work ethic. We started the game well.
Rotherham came closest to scoring, when Andy Rinomhota hit the post early on, but a draw was a fair outcome.
Richardson, whose side are 19 points adrift of safety with eight games left, spoke of how he'd lifted his squad following heavy defeats at Coventry City and Norwich City within five days of each other.
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Hide Ad“The players needed my support and leadership to recover from a week like that,” he said. “I would like to think they have had that in abundance this week.
“The lads were on the floor. I’ve had to pick them up and change shape a little bit to get more forward runners on the pitch and be more dynamic with it.
“We had enough possession and moments to win the game. We could have been better with our decision-making.”
Huddersfield remained in the drop zone on goal difference and their head coach, Andre Breitenreiter said: “We came to get the three points. Rotherham are dangerous from long throws but we defended really good.”
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Hide AdThomas picked up a second yellow card soon after the break for bringing down Ollie Rathbone who was running through on goal.
Breitenreiter said: “The game changed with the red card. It’s never easy to play with ten players but in my opinion you couldn’t see that we had only ten. The boys did really good. We created chances and set-pieces. We did not score and we have to work on this.
“I am sure we would have won today with 11 players. It was good to get one point and a clean sheet.”