It’s gone too flat after the hope of play-off bounce ... The David Rawson Rotherham United fan column
After Birmingham, we're in the relegation zone.
Before Burton, Leyton Orient were bottom: played four, lost four. Now they're above us with a game in hand.
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Hide AdWe've surely too much ability and experience to be in a relegation battle. However, seven games in and we're still to put together a full 90 minutes that says that we're genuine promotion material either. It's a marathon not a sprint. We're a work in progress. Both of these things are true.
But the elite athletes have hit the front and opened up a gap to the fun-runners behind. And while there's a lot of work on show, is not hugely clear there's much progress.
Birmingham outplayed us for 80 minutes. For the first ten minutes we slammed away, churned through our set moves, forced them back. They looked troubled, like someone sitting down to read getting distracted by some unruly kids outside. Then they shut the windows, checked the doors were locked and paid us no more attention.
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Hide AdWe shouted, we banged on the wood and the glass, we ended up with half-a-dozen forwards randomly stood in their front garden impotently yelling away. It made no impression. They ignored us, finished the chapter and got on with the rest of their weekend.
Of course, they're a freak of a club in this league, wielding a budget that's a pile driver to crack the nut of promotion. But Wrexham gave them much more of a game than we did; at least made them think a bit, made them break sweat. Wigan ran them close, losing to an injury-time winner.
The brutal truth is that no side with genuine promotion aspirations should have been swept aside so easily, especially at home, especially when fielding pretty much its first-choice 11.
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Hide AdAnother truth is that the gap between where we are and where we need to be isn't huge. But it's not clear how we bridge it.
Clarke-Harris isn't getting fleeter of foot. Nombe, for all his running, hasn't the control or the sharpness to be anything more than a willing dasher. Whatever sum you put together of Odoffin, Tiehi, Kelly and Powell doesn't equal a dynamic midfield. Wilks wafts and drifts and hints at something that never quite happens.
It needs that moment, like in past Evans seasons, when – half by accident, half by design – we hit on the formula and we take off. Raggett's return could be the catalyst.
We need something, though – and soon.