What an amazing feeling, great day at the NYS although I have to admit it was looking extremely depressing for so much of the game.
It's all cliches, said many many times, but it doesn't matter how well your team plays if they don't put the ball in the onion bag then it counts for sod all. It applies just as much today as it did when we felt like we should have hammered Bolton.
Swansea were a great team to watch and played some champagne stuff, that little sod Daniel James was a real threat every time he touched the ball. But for all their top quality play, they could only score one goal. Rodak was excellent and definitely got us out of jail more than once, but lets give credit where it's due, the rest of the defence battled to the very last kick. Especially when the game went in our favour.
Did we deserve the win? Yes, we scored more than them.
Did we deserve the penalties? A pen is a pen, we still have to score them.
Were we lucky? Possibly lucky that it was only 1-0 at 75 minutes, but we never gave up despite being outclassed and for that alone we deserve some credit. When Proctor came on we certainly looked rejuvenated and even before the first pen we were starting to push forward and their keeper saved superbly from the free kick.
Did Swansea throw it away? Yes, they were arrogant. Their players were arrogant. James took great pleasure in goading the Millers fans when he set up their goal, as did Naughton when he won a free kick that was never deserved. They went into cruise control and expected us to fold. We didn't, we battled on and for once got a couple of key decisions go our way.
We've certainly played our "get out of jail" card today and I doubt we'll see another game like that this season, if ever! So I hope that the final scoreline doesn't gloss over some of the flaws and, as suggested by IBS further up the thread, I hope Warne still lets them "have it."
Maybe other teams, and their fans, will learn to stop underestimating thelittle old Millers.
UTM.