Rotherham v Oxford Quotes - Injured

I managed to catch a quick word with Chris Wilder after Saturday’s defeat to Rotherham as he left to visit his family home in Yorkshire and the Sheffield-born boss said:

“Le Fondre was the difference. He obviously took his goals great. The first one looked offside to us. The second one he just drifted off and that’s the reason why he scores those goals. I think they’re a decent side, a good side.

I think we’ve acquitted ourselves pretty well seeing as we chucked three players in pretty quickly and they’ve not had much work to do with us. We’re alright. We just need to get those three bedded in. It was a difficult game for us, but as I say, they’re a decent side and they’ve obviously gone close last year and they’re tipped to even closer this year.

I think we can do better in certain areas and I think we will do, but it’s a bit of a tough game for us at the moment, a tough learning curve for us all and we’ve just got to get through it. It’s a test of the players now to see how they go about it. When it’s going well everybody’s a ‘player’, but now they’ve got to show what they’ve got mentally. They’ve all got ability because we’ve seen it. Ronnie (Moore) said in the programme he thinks we’ll go well and we’ve had some decent people say decent things about us, but at the moment we’ve lost three games on the bounce and we’ve got to arrest that pretty quickly. I’m confident that we’ve got the players to do that though.

To be fair to the new lads they’ve come in and had one training session. They’re good players as well. It’s Catch 22. I expected them to be alright, but it would always have been better if I’d had a full week to work with them. We brought them in for their League experience and I’ve seen enough in the couple of days I’ve been working with them to know that they’ll be good for us and we’ll be good for them.”

Millers boss Ronnie Moore was delighted with his team after the game and said:

“It was a good win and we deserved it, there was no doubt about that. I thought we were the better side. The first ten minutes was a bit ropey-ish, but after that we played some excellent stuff and really 2-1 makes it sound a lot closer than it was. We had enough chances to have seen them off, but it’s nice to get the win.

And Ronnie had some words of praise for winger Marcus Marshall, 21, who deservedly picked up the man of the match bubbly. Moore said:

“He’s been brilliant all season to be fair. He’s coming on, has fantastic ability and pace. What he has got at this present time is a bit of self belief. We’ve worked hard on him and I thought he was excellent today.

I thought that Nicky Law was good in midfield. Alfie (Adam Le Fondre) got the glory, but Ryan Taylor worked hard up front. There were a lot of good positive performances from our lads.

Alfie and Ryan are two good players, there’s no doubt about that. It’s just a pity that Ryan hasn’t got a goal for himself, but he showed a fantastic work rate and the commitment to close people down.

We’ve done everything that we wanted to do and we’re just disappointed that we’ve conceded a goal bang on half time. We had one or two little warnings around our area earlier on so it was disappointing when Warry (Andy Warrington) made such a good save and their lad followed it in. To be fair though I don’t think he’s made too many saves after that and we were on the front foot.

Coidy (new Blackpool loan signing Danny Coid) hasn’t played for a while and he’s come in and shown some great quality. He’s two-footed and will be a massive bonus for us I think. He did really well when you consider he hasn’t played a lot of first team football. He reads the game well and knows when to play it long and when top play it short. He’ll be a big plus for us defensively, there’s no doubt about that. He can’t play against York (in the FA Cup replay) because he wasn’t here for the first game. Blackpool were happy for him to play. He can play at Darlington if we get through, but it gives us a little bit of a headache as to who is going to play there especially as Cresser (Ryan Cresswell) has his back in spasm again so he looks as though … well I don’t want to say how long because you can never judge with backs how long it’s going to take. But they’re going down like nine pins at the moment. I can’t believe the amount of bad luck we’re getting with injuries in massive areas for us and he’ll be a big miss, there’s no doubt about that.”

It’s a different injury to the one he had before. It’s on the opposite side to the one he had and so he’ll go and see a specialist and we’ll see what’s going on there cos it’s not right. He hasn’t been doing weights since the last time he did it. It’s never happened to him before when he’s had to come off during a game with it so we’ll just have to monitor it and see how things are.

At the moment we haven’t got a right back. We’ve got the young kid Luke (Ashworth) who’s going to be a ‘player’. Whether he’s quite ready to come in regular is another thing.

We seem to be going to the Chairman every week now saying ‘Can we bring him in? Or can we bring someone else in?’ It’s just incredible, but we’ll keep going and take a look on Monday and see how the walking wounded are.”

And on the crowds cheers at the final whistle Moore was relieved he didn’t have to contend with the jeers he has heard after recent games. He joked:

“It was better than boos wasn’t it? At least we showed a bit of commitment, a bit of effort, a bit of enthusiasm and not too little skill and I think the crowd appreciated that and if I’d have paid my money today I’d have clapped them off as well.”

And Moore is keen to keep Le Fondre once the transfer window opens in January, although he revealed:

“I’ve had no enquires for Alfie and to be honest I don’t want any. If we received a silly off for him of course we’d have to sit down and think about it, but I’d prefer not to think about it.

He has been working hard to add things to his game and I think that it shows. He’s becoming a much better all round player.”

Le Fondre revealed that he is trying to add something to his game which must scare the living daylights out of League Two defenders. He said:

“I’ve been trying to help out the team more this season by dropping back and pressing the opposing midfielders – doing my bit to help the team defend.

I haven’t been thinking about leaving and why should I? You can see from the number of goals I’m scoring that I’m happy here. When strikers are happy they’ll score goals and that’s the situation.

If someone made Rotherham an offer it wouldn’t just have to be right for me, my wife and my family, but for the club as well, but the grass isn’t always greener.”