'Now or never' ... Steve Evans' last chance to revive Rotherham United's season
MANAGER Steve Evans is pinning his hopes on a ten-day break in the fixture schedule turning around Rotherham United's ailing League One campaign.
The Millers today lost 1-0 at one of their boss's former clubs, Crawley Town, to drop to 18th place in the table.
They are showing relegation form, which is a far cry from Evans' pledge to have them challenging for promotion.
The Scot has talked of the club being close to the play-off frame by Christmas and, after a fourth loss in five league matches, said: "It's now or never."
Rotherham don't play against until December 2 because they have a blank weekend coming up while other teams are in FA Cup action.
"We have to take the pain and go back on the training ground," Evans said. "The spark has to come from working hard on the training ground and getting our big players back available."
The Millers have been without key men through injury and more were missing today because of sickness in the camp.
However, they were able to welcome back Jonson Clarke-Harris and Esapa Osong after the strike duo had both spent six weeks in the treatment room.
In foul weather, both of them spurned first-half chances while young substitute Ciaran McGuckin missed the best opportunity of all in stoppage time.
Rotherham would have been fortunate to come away from West Sussex with a point as they were comprehensively outplayed by opponents who had begun the day in the drop zone.
"Conditions made it farcical for both teams," Evans said. "The chances came for us. We had two big chances in the first half. Jonno should do better with a header and Esapa should do better when he's through on the left side of the box.
"Then the opportunity at the end ... it's the biggest chance of the season.
"We're here without big players. Illness has been in the camp since Wednesday/Thursday. Credit to five or six of the players, they've gone out to play. They've not played very well, but they've gone out to play."
He described the rest of the players as "going through the motions".
Crawley won the contest with a 21st-minute close-range strike from Willam Swan after poor Millers defending.
Evans didn't emerge for media duties until half an hour after the final whistle because of a dressing-room inquest.
"You can imagine how disappointed we are," he said. "That's why I'm so late coming out to speak to you boys."