We’re not on track … but we’re not off target either: The David Rawson Rotherham United fan column


We’re going to score early in a game soon, win by three or four and stride up the table. Or we’ll keep walloping away at teams, fail to take advantage of our opportunities, lose confidence and struggle.
It’s much more likely to be the first option. Surely?
But this is us. You can’t ever be quite sure. The wounds of last season went deep. The changeover in the squad, in the philosophy is enormous. The shockwaves haven't settled yet.
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We know how to deal with being pretty good and, sadly, with being very bad. Right now, we're neither. You can see what we might be, and that makes everything we're not at the moment all the more apparent.
Eight points off the promotion places after three games says we're not on track, but we're not wholly off target either.
If anything, right now, for the first time in years, we're an absolutely straightforward, standard-issue third-division football team. Solid, physical, tough to beat - the sort of team that teams in a relegation scrap might hope to get points out of, and teams at the top feel they ought to beat. We're definitely not used to that.
It’s not easy to play against us, but it’s not difficult either. We force teams to concentrate, we don't make them think. We set an exam paper with the same question printed over and over again.
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Hide AdIt's hard going (you need a bit of luck and some decent goalkeeping) but flood your own box, stay compact, compete and you've a fair chance of walking away with a decent grade.
Yes, we dominate games. We're relentless, hammering the ball at the opponent's goal, a battering ram of a team. Yet we don't create confusion or panic, just a grim determination to do an unpleasant, arduous task as well as possible.
Why? Because dominance isn't always the same thing as control. We don't manage the flow of play, we don't control the pace.
We do what we do and if we let up for a moment, if we make a mistake, we're exposed. Battered Bristol Rovers still had the two cleanest chances of the match.
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Hide AdDominance, though, is no bad thing. Especially early in the season, with a team still forming its final identity.
But by itself it's inconclusive. And we're not used to dealing with inconclusive.
Are we the resilient boxing champion whose class comes through in the “championship rounds”? Or are we the heavyweight contender continually threatening the knockout punch that never lands who loses on points?