The Steve Evans column: 'Things will turn for us. All the ingredients are there for us to come good.'

You can throw in another 27 against Crewe Alexandra in the Carabao Cup as well.

I'd have taken that at the start of the season.

It's an unbelievable statistic that we have yet to score in the league after all those opportunities. We top the division for expected goals (xG) yet we have no goals.

Things will turn for us. All the ingredients are there for us to come good.

As a manager, if your team's not creating chances then you've got severe problems. I have a team that is creating chances.

Against Exeter we should have scored four times, we should have scored seven or eight against Crewe, the same against Bristol Rovers and we could have had half a dozen against Wycombe.

Our xG is so high because we look a real threat.

If you compare the performance at Exeter to the ones against Bristol Rovers and Wycombe, it was chalk and cheese. We are a work in progress after a summer rebuild but we are developing.

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YOU can win the League One Golden Boot once if you're lucky.

To do it twice in two seasons in that division and then score 13 goals with minimal starts tells you what Jonson Clarke- Harris is all about.

Bringing him to AESSEAL New York Stadium after his departure from Peterborough United remains a brilliant piece of business in the summer transfer window.

We left him out of the starting 11 at Wycombe but I'll still back him for Golden Boot number three.

The reality is, Jonson missed three weeks of pre-season with a little calf strain and that cost him a core part of his fitness work.

He will score goals, he just needs to find that little bit of sharpness.

He's working harder and longer on the training ground to help himself get into the kind of shape that makes him so lethal.

We gave Jordan Hugill a start up front at Adams Park in Jonson's place.

Jordan, to me, is a really good striker. Ninety per cent of the clubs in our league would certainly want him in their group.

He'd earned the right to start after scoring twice and playing well in our Bristol Street Motors Trophy win over Mansfield Town four days earlier.

He had the bit between his teeth that night because he'd been on the bench and had not had much action against Bristol Rovers.

You only have to look at his first goal against Mansfield to see what he's capable of. It was a magnificent touch and a magnificent finish.

What about the pass from Alex MacDonald that set it up as well? There won't be a better one than that in League One all season.

I thought Jordan did well against Wycombe and gave their back two a real problem.

He was competitive, covered every inch of the pitch and linked up well with Sam Nombe. He gave their back two a real problem.

Sam missed some chances against Bristol Rovers and missed some more at Wycombe.

One of the things I like about Sam is that he's not frightened to go back into the box looking for another opportunity. A lot of strikers miss chances and go hiding. Not him.

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THERE I was at Meadow Lane, sitting watching Notts County play Grimsby Town in a League Two match last Thursday night and taking a bit of stick from the away fans.

I had to smile. Just by being there I'd made myself a target. But do you know what? There was nowhere else I'd rather have been that particular evening.

Promotions are special achievements and I'm pleased to say I've had plenty of them in my time. However, they don't come without you putting in the hard yards first.

I've always believed that if you're a manager you have to live every moment of it.

Sheffield Wednesday's Danny Rohl and I have talked about this and he's a lot like me: he's one of the first in and one of the last away.

Chris Wilder at Sheffield United, he's consumed by football. I speak to Chris at all sorts of stupid times. Steve Cooper down the road at Leicester City is the same.

There are a lot of managers who do it. I think that if you don't do it, you pay a price.

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SEAN Raggett, Joe Rafferty and Joe Hungbo have missed out through injury for us in the early stages of the new campaign.

It's significant, in my eyes, that they picked up their issues during a match and not at Roundwood.

For too long before I returned to Rotherham United for a second spell, too many players were in the treatment room and not on the grass because of what was happening at our training base.

I came in here and made it clear that if players have niggles and knocks we will give them sufficient time to recover.

We don't give them extra time – they get paid a lot of money – but we give them sufficient time.

More importantly, there's no point in us having a head of human performance, two physios and two masseuses and then not buying into their experience and expertise.

As much as I think I'm the best physio in the building, I'm probably the worst because I want all my players out there for every session.

Our head of human performance, Chris Royston, does a good job.

He would never say it himself, but perhaps in the past he was overruled, which led to a lot of additional time of players being out.

That really cost this club last season and we cannot go down that route again.

If we have to have two or three players out now for a couple of weeks so that we then have them available for the next eight months, that is a no-brainer.

You can't bring them back too early because you'll then lose them for much, much longer.