Rotherham United's mentality lifted by win ahead of '˜ludicrous' schedule

Rotherham United embark on a 'ludicrous' festive schedule determined to end 2017 on a high.
Rotherham United manager Paul Warne, left, with assistant Richie Barker (Picture: Jonathan Gawthorpe).Rotherham United manager Paul Warne, left, with assistant Richie Barker (Picture: Jonathan Gawthorpe).
Rotherham United manager Paul Warne, left, with assistant Richie Barker (Picture: Jonathan Gawthorpe).

Relegation from the Championship, picking up just 23 points and conceding 98 goals, means the Millers have few fond memories of the last 12 months.

But manager Paul Warne has helped stabilise the club in League One, sat in the top 10 approaching the halfway mark of the season.

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Now Rotherham face five games in 16 days – starting with tomorrow’s visit of strugglers Plymouth Argyle – which could go a long way to defining their season’s ambitions.

“It’s a busy time, like a tenth of the season – five games in 16 days, which is ludicrous,” said assistant manager Richie Barker. “We have back-to-back home games, a really busy time over Christmas.

“These are the times, Christmas and Easter, when you play loads of games in small periods that you can catapult yourself half a dozen places up the table very quickly. Hopefully that can happen with us.”

Barker will be hoping the Millers can build on last weekend’s 2-1 win at Blackpool, which ended a two-month wait for a league victory.

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“Hopefully we have now turned our backs on what was not a great run of results and it will hopefully change the mentality of the players and we can now start to look forward,” he said.

“It lifts everybody’s spirits and it makes it a more enjoyable place to be.

“Certainly over the last couple of games, their [Plymouth] form suggests that they’re not a bottom-four team. It’s not a game we’ll go into lightly and just assume it’s Plymouth, who are in the bottom four, and everything will be fine.

“We’ll be treating this as though we’re playing a Wigan, Blackburn or a Shrewsbury so we won’t be going into this with any complacency. I think if the league season had started six weeks later they certainly wouldn’t be where they are now.”