Blackpool v Rotherham United: Commitment not in question, just consistency, says Steve Evans

Even with 16 games to go after Tuesday's at Blackpool, that is starting to look a long shot.

The Millers travel to Bloomfield Road 10 points and nine places outside the top six after Saturday's 2-1 defeat at home to Shrewsbury Town.

Six games unbeaten after Christmas briefly raised hopes an injury-hit squad might be getting its act together but four defeats in five games in all competitions have brought all the same questions back.

Chief amongst them is why Rotherham struggle to to beat teams at the wrong end of the table. Although they lost 2-1, their best performance in the last five matches was against leaders Birmingham City. Unsurprisingly, Evans wants to use that as a benchmark by the seaside.

"I'm not going to sit here and say the players lacked effort and desire to get back in the game, I think we showed that in abundance," said Evans.

"We have to produce (consistency) to go get into the play-offs – top 10 first of all.

"People are entitled to say in Saturday's first half we were laboured in possession and it was slow, very reminiscent of Bradford on Tuesday (a 1-0 Football League Trophy defeat).

"But I don't think anyone can say in the last 20 minutes – apart from the goals – that we didn't play well, we didn't open them up and have crosses, balls off the line and handballs in the box not given."

Inevitably, Evans is not writing off his team's chances of the play-offs.

"I don't think we're done," he insisted. "If we'd won on Saturday we'd have been in 11th but we have a difficult game at Blackpool and we need to produce the type of performance we did at Birmingham.

"We're also hopeful in the next week or two we get back some of the players missing."

Rotherham will hope on-loan Manchester United midfielder Dan Gore, pictured, is fit to make his first start having pulled out of Saturday's game complaining of soreness in his foot.

Johnson Clarke-Harris, Mallik Wilks and Shaun McWilliams are expected back from injury next week or the week after.