Rotherham United 2 (Bopp 7, Mills 45)
Scunthorpe United 1 (Sharp 6)

Att: 4708

Rotherham: Cutler, Worrell, Mills, Sharps, Robertson, Partridge (Wiseman 89), Williamson, Bopp, Keane, Facey, Hoskins (Hibbert 84).
Subs Not Used: Woods, Taylor, Montgomery.

Scunthorpe: Murphy, Mulligan, Crosby, Foster, Ridley, Taylor (MacKenzie 45), Hinds, Baraclough (Byrne 45), Sparrow, Sharp, Keogh (Ferretti 66).
Subs Not Used: Williams, Lillis.

Booked: Foster.
Ref: K Wright (Cambridgeshire)

The Iron continued their poor start to the season against a Rotherham United side who sealed their second win of the season to reduce their points deficit to -4. This was without doubt the worst performance that Scunthorpe have produced so far this season and even though it is still early days the Iron find themselves in the bottom four.
Brian Laws kept faith the same starting line up which were held to a 2-2 by Crewe at Glanford Park 7 days earlier. In fairness United could count themselves slightly unfortunate not have won any of their previous games and so it came as no real surprise when they made a good start against their troubled hosts from South Yorkshire. Billy Sharp was once again the United scorer as he headed home a Dave Mulligan corner after only 6 minutes. Surely this would provide the visitors the platform to go on and seal their first win of the season. Those hopes however were crushed within seconds as Rotherham replied immediately with Bopp latching onto loose ball to fire the home team level. It was a fine strike by the ex Nottingham Forest man but one had to question the amount of space given to him by a statuesque Iron defence. The hosts were buoyed by this and pushed forward continuously against a very ragged looking Iron team and it came as no surprise when the Millers took the lead on the stroke of half time. A well worked free kick routine. The set piece was taken by Williamson who flicked the ball to Hoskins to cross the ball to the back post where the unmarked Mills headed past Joe Murphy in the visitors goal.
The half time lead was no more than Rotherham deserved but surely Scunthopre could only get better in the second half. In an effort to get back into the game Laws made a double change at half time with Byrne coming on at right back for his fist appearance of the season, Byrne slotted in at right back and Mulligan moved forward to the right hand side of midfield in place of Cleveland Taylor. The other change saw Neil Mackenzie come on in the middle of midfield in place of Barraclough. In fairness to the two players replaced they were probably only as bad as most of the rest of the United team. The substitutions had little impact on the game with Rotherham still looking the better side, that was until the hard working Sharp got the better of the home defence and managed to round Cutler in the home teams goal but unfortunately for Sharp he was unable to force the ball home as Worrell got back and managed to block Sharps effort. That was just about the only clear chance that Scunthorpe managed to create during the whole of the second half and indeed it was Rotherham who wasted the better chances to add to the score, Murphy making a good double save to deny Williamson. As the game drew to its conclusion Scunthorpe did have a couple of half chances but both Mulligan and Sparrow fired snap shots well over the top of Cutlers goal. If either of these efforts had found the target it would have been far more than Scunthorpe deserved. Rotherham are now only 6 points behind the Iron who based on this performance could be in for a long hard winter.
Hopefully this performance will result in Laws delving into the transfer market in an attempt to strengthen his thread bare squad. At the moment the team virtually picks its self and even though there is no doubting that we have some very good players in our starting 11 we seem to have very few options of changing things when it starts to go wrong. A large number of people had off days and it would be wrong to name individuals, in fact the only outfield player to come out of the match with any credit would be Sharp who is the only Scunthorpe player to score from open play this season. Strike partner Andy Keogh despite playing pretty well in the opening 2 or 3 games is still waiting for his first goal of the campaign and a the lack of a fulltime left winger is also a major concern, that along with our continued problems of conceding too many poor goals.
Things need to improve, and quickly !