Leam Richardson on his mindset mission as Rotherham United move closer to the drop

The head coach, who has been in the hot-seat only since December, watched his side give up a first-half lead in their clash with fellow Championship strugglers Queens Park Rangers to lose 2-1 at Loftus Road.

The loss left the division's bottom club 16 points adrift of safety with 12 matches left to play and afterwards Richardson pointed to the dispirited band of players he inherited when he became the successor to sacked manager Matt Taylor.

“I knew I was coming into a difficult position with the mindset,” he said. “I had to pick the group off the floor.”

Despite the run of poor results which has made relegation a virtual certainty, the Millers have produced improved displays in their most recent outings, against Hull City, Watford and Ipswich Town, and were on top for a spell against Rangers when they went in front through a goal from Tom Eaves.

Richardson believes his men are showing enough fight to remain competitive up until the end of a difficult campaign.

“Today is disappointing because we wanted to build on those performances we've had,” he said. “We want to turn them into results.

“There's still the hunger there to compete. It would be easy to roll over and lose games 3-0, 4-0, 5-0, which we were doing before. We need more belief, more consistency.

“We'll keep going. We know the level, we know the challenge, and we won't shy away from it.”

Eaves' seventh-minute strike had the visitors in front at the interval but Rangers hit back after the break through substitute Paul Smyth and Chris Willock to take the spoils and move out of the drop zone.

Their head coach, Marti Cifuentes, who made two substitutions at the break, described it as a “milestone” result and added: “The performance today was mixed.

“It was perhaps the worst scenario we could face, going behind after a few minutes. We had talked a lot about starting on the front foot and applying pressure.

“Rotherham have been changing their approach in the last few weeks. They are in an all-or-nothing situation so are risking more. We could see that against Ipswich – they were man-marking and pressing very high. It's more risky but it paid off for them.

“At half-time we made some adjustments and the second half was much better.”