It could go down to the last day … the David Rawson Rotherham United Fan Column

First, we need at least four wins between now and the end of the season. You need, on average, 47 points to stay up. It's doable.

Second, we're going to have to rely on some players who aren't first choice. Every game sees somebody flexing a muscle cautiously while there's a break in play, before leaving the field 10 minutes later and heading down the tunnel for an ice pack and enforced rest.

Third, it's going to the wire. The away fixtures are tough. There's a local derby in the remaining home games. It feels very likely that we'll be heading to Wycombe on the last day needing something from the game.

Fourth, it's not just the outcome that matters, but the way the rest of the season unfolds.

The performance against Bradford was more coherent than many before it. But it lacked spark and urgency. It lacked hunger. Another game where the opposition keeper was more an interested spectator than active participant. If we were the sort of team that doesn't give up stupid, sloppy goals, it was the sort of performance that leads to a gritty 0-0.

Unfortunately, giving up stupid, sloppy goals is very much our stock in trade and everyone knows it. We've had one gritty 0-0 in the league all season, away at Luton. We can't park the bus because we can't reliably find the brake. Watching us try is painful. The manager probably feels that the fans judge too harshly his attempts at pragmatism. In fact, the fans are just realists. We know what's coming. We'd rather go down giving it a good go than trying to manage our way through games.

Which is why Plymouth was so important. We probably caught them on a good day, with some important players missing and an approach that didn't overly deal in subtlety. But we took the game to them. We made their keeper work. We didn't second guess ourselves, check back, reset, deliberate. Even if their disallowed goal had been given, even if they'd nicked a win, I think we'd still have stuck with the team.

Because that's how we need to play. That's us. We're not about “resting on the ball”, we're not about “game management”. I don't think we've ever managed to keep the ball successfully in the corner to kill off a game. Even if we come unstuck, at some basic, fundamental level, playing that way speaks to the supporters in a way we understand.

It matters. Go down swinging, failing because, in the end, we weren't quite good enough, and there's something to build on. Go down tamely, trying to be “modern” and “professional” and I don't know that we recover.