As Rafa had pointed out more than once in his press conference on Friday Rotherham United are a much better team than their position in the table would suggest and they gave Newcastle everything we could handle yesterday.

Rotherham had a few chances near the end and it could have easily ended up as a 1-1 draw as it did last Saturday at Villa Park but we held out for what was an important win.

Rafa Benitez at Rotherham yesterday

And it was a stunning goal from 42 times capped (9 goals) Ghanaian International Christian Atsu that got us all three vital points yesterday.

Here’s Rafa’s quick analysis of the game:

“They started with high intensity and pressed really high.” “It was difficult for us to keep the ball and pass the ball.”

“The impression of the game was that they were pushing from throw-ins and corners.” “They were dangerous.”

“If you analyse the stats they had 10 shots and we had 20.” “We did what we had to do, defend and pass the ball.”

“We had to play the counter attack when he had to do it.” “It was a difficult game against a good team but we did what we had to do.”

Now the lads deserve their two week break – the non-Internationals that is – and then we start again on October 15th at home to Brentford.

This next set of game until the next International break will be (only) 5 league games and one EFL Cup game in 22 days – 6 games in 22 days.

That’s one game less than the 7 games we have played in the last 22 days since we started up on October 5th at Derby County.

It should be a breeze.

🙂

Note that this kind of schedule is what we would have if we get back into the Premier League and then get back into Europe.

Here’s hoping.

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