Rotherham United: Evans wants Millers to be a ‘Swansea of the Championship.’

ROTHERHAM UNITED boss Steve Evans has revealed his designs upon turning the Millers into the ‘Swansea of the Championship.’
Steve Evans -Pic by: Richard ParkesSteve Evans -Pic by: Richard Parkes
Steve Evans -Pic by: Richard Parkes

After clinching their safety mission last term, the Millers are now aiming to consolidate in the second tier and gradually establish themselves and Evans says that the template that Swansea have showed in the top-flight in terms of slowly but surely marking their mark is one to follow.

The Millers chief said: “I think we need to establish ourselves, as people look at us, as a Swansea of the Championship.

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“They are mid-table in the Premier League and can they kick on? Yeah, I think they can.

“It will be a question of whether they can get those one or two signings who make the difference. They are outstanding to watch. and all the other stuff that goes with it.

“I think we now need to become a Championship club that people see as a solid, settled second-tier club. Not necessarily the biggest.

“Do you want to be the biggest? I’m not sure that you always want to be the biggest.

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“But you want to be the best at what you can do, so I think if we can become a solid, mid-table Championship side being able to cast an eye towards that play-off pack, then that would be a remarkable success.”

Evans believes that events had conspired for them, that his Millers side would have been comfortably ensconsed towards mid-table in the latter part of the season.

Alongside the deduction of three points for fielding an ineligible player in Farrend Rawson, the Scot feels that four points were also painfully lost in two draws against crisis club Blackpool, who propped up the table at the end of the 2014-15 campaign.

Evans said: “If we just take that basic minimum of the season – give us the three points back that were a mistake and deal with the two Blackpool games – we would have gone into the February and March period looking up rather than down.

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“Over the piece, we were the one team out of that group around the teams who went down – and I think you have to say Blackpool, Wigan and Millwall deserved to go down because the league table doesn’t lie – who should have been 12/15 points better off?”