Rotherham United's away form a 'mystery' to caretaker manager Wayne Carlisle

The Millers have not won outside of the New York Stadium since beating Sheffield United last November.

Carlisle was assistant manager for most of that time but he was in caretaker control for Tuesday's 4-1 defeat at Hull City. The performance was a world away from the battling draw with Leeds United in South Yorkshire four days earlier.

"Only they can tell you how they're thinking. I just think we can't back up home performances," said a bemused Carlisle.

"We get a decent performance on Friday and then for whatever reason, whether it's the squad, how thin it is, the energy levels dropping off, I don't know but we just can't seem to get a foothold in the game and when we concede it almost seems like we get a little bit frantic and scrambled.

"It's a mystery for me, it's obviously the elephant in the room. We'll continue to try and address it because we've got an away game on Saturday but only they know what's going on inside their heads.

"I don't know if they lost heart, I thought they got a bit scrambled.

"I didn't think they lost heart throughout the whole game, I thought they kept going and I thanked them for that at the end but when you shoot yourself in the foot as early as we did, it does become difficult and it's easy to get a little bit frantic. You end up chasing it.

"Probably the most disappointing thing for me was the second and third goals - they're things we'd talked about, we'd showed, the players were aware of them and we just deal with them well enough."

Calrisle explained a bit more about why he was so unhappy with Hull's second and third goals of an excellent performance from their perspective, in the ninth and 20th minutes.

"We have to deal with the cross," said Carlisle of Jaden Philogene's goal to add to Tyler Morton's opener. "It's come in, it's hit Dexter (Lembikisa) on the back. He's got to head that ball. As a young player learning the game who wants to play in the Premier League he has to head that ball.

"Then Philogene backheels it through legs and that's something that has to be dealt with better.

"The run off the back of shoulders for the third goal was again something we'd covered, it was too easy. There was a mix-up between a centre-half and a midfielder.

"They both knew if he was off the shoulder the centre-half had to take him and if he was in front the midfielder had to take him and they didn't deal with it.

"It's disappoiting as much as anything.

"We plan everything thoroughly every single day because they're professional atheltes playing in one of the most competitive leagues in the world and they deserve that."