​It’s going to take play-off form to give us a chance: David Rawson's Rotherham United fan column

You’d want to come out of Swansea and West Brom at home and Plymouth away with maybe five points if you’re serious about making a go of staying up. The ambitious would target seven points out of the nine available.

As it turned out, the points were there. You could see how Swansea’s deliberate sideways passing might fall apart to a team with a bit of go in them. You could see how West Brom might be too careful for too long and suddenly find themselves having to chase a game they’d expected to stroll through. You could see how we could take the game to Plymouth and finally put the dismal record of away from home failure to bed.

You might make the case that four points was an OK return. You night suggest that, if nothing else, an away point was something to build from before we face two really tough-looking fixtures over Christmas.

How do you put a positive spin on no points from three games? A nine-point gap to safety?

Mitigating circumstances? We got the wrong end of some big refereeing calls against Swansea and Plymouth. But that’s a feature, not a bug, of life in this League, and it’s unlikely that we’re going to see a slew of decisions go our way as things “even themselves out”.

We played most of the Swansea game and a lot of Plymouth with ten men. Usually, there’d be a burning injustice to cling to there. But no. Those were two of the most frustratingly stupid dismissals it’s possible to imagine.

It’s basic stuff: don’t do anything daft if you’re on a yellow. Ayala broke that rule against Swansea. Quite what he was doing, or thought he was doing, against Plymouth is beyond me.

At least, at last, there was some fight, some scrap in Devon. At least, at last, there was a goal for Tom Eaves, who embodies the honest effort and wholehearted graft that we like to think is part of our DNA. At least, at last, there was something to cheer.

But there weren’t any points. Which means it is going to take play-off form from here to have even a chance of avoiding relegation.

Which means Leam Richardson is in a really tricky position – here with long enough left to risk taking some blame for relegation. but not here in time to make the shift that we need before we’re down.

And yet. There was a difference, in just two days of work. Something to cling to, perhaps, as winter sets in.