"Rotherham United's hiding players - the responsibility is on you": Lee Clark fires another broadside ahead of relegation showdown
FOR several weeks, it's been a case of when not if Rotherham United will be relegated.
Should they lose at Wigan Athletic on Tuesday night, then the club will drop into League Two for the first time in 13 years.
When he came in last month, Lee Clark faced a gargantuan task, many would say an impossible one.
His patience snapped after Saturday's derby loss to Barnsley when he called out his players - Dan Gore excepted - for what he viewed to be a 'disgraceful' second-half performance.
The damning words from the Millers manager - who has picked up one point from his four matches in charge - went further in an explosive after-match press conference, with players' match minutes being one topic that he sunk his teeth into.
Clark (pictured) will again be without a number of players at Wigan, with the north-easterner having been particularly critical of the number of soft-tissue injuries that have led to absences among the Millers' squad throughout this term.
He continued: "I've come in and there are restrictions on players. 'He can play only 20 minutes, he can only play 30 minutes, he can only play an hour.'
"How can you try to get any continuity in your club working in that way? As a manager, you want a consistent basis where you're picking the same team as much as you can because you're getting positive results and also because you're not getting injuries.
"This is League One. It's like, wow. Responsibility - when you're a footballer, the responsibility is yours.
"It's not your coach, it's not your fitness coach, it's not your physio, it's not your doctor, it's not your sports scientist: it's you.
"If I'm not feeling fit and I can't hit the outputs I want, if I can't get to my 12/13/14km, I need to do something about it, I need to go and do some fitness work. If I'm not feeling sharp in my head and my feet, I need to go and do some sharpening work. If my passing's off, I need to get a bag of balls and get somebody to do my passing with. If my shooting's off, whatever, I go and sort it."
Broadening out his critique, Clark deemed it necessary to declare that some players, in his eyes, are currently 'hiding' behind the club's medical and sports medical department.
He continued: "I obviously haven't done things right in the four games. But there has to come a time where the responsibility is on your shoulders as the player.
"The injury list, people hiding behind the medical department or the sports science department, no, no, no. You're a footballer, you know what's required, you know if you're at your sharpest and your deadliest. You have to do what it takes.
"From Premier League down, look at what football is about now - athleticism, dynamism, fitness, high outputs. You look at Premier League footballers, they've got that. They're smashing 14/15km a game in midfield, their sprint levels are off the charts. And they do it every game. They do it Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday."