Immediate Reaction: Rotherham 4-2 Bolton Wanderers

I'm really struggling with what to write here because, being completely honest with you, my immediate reaction, much like yours - full of profanity unfit to ever be repeated.

What the HELL was that?!

We've just been utterly annihilated by Rotherham United, a game after we held one of the best teams in the country to a well earned draw.

We managed to save a bit of face by scoring two late goals through Liam Trotter and Matt Mills, and there's always the shocking refereeing display to point to - we had two blatant penalties turned down, the first of which directly led to Rotherham's third goal.

Ultimately, however, we just weren't anywhere near good enough.

It was almost as if we were paying homage to the darkest of Bolton Wandderers under Dougie Freedman.

There may be a number of reasons as to why we played as bad as we did: the 3-5-2 formation obviously didn't work too well and Rotherham took advantage down the left hand side; the Rotherham side blew us away immediately, scoring in the 2nd minute, and it appears that we never managed to get over the early set back.

But I think you can probably put Tuesday's terrible display down to tiredness and a severe lack of numbers. The backs-to-the-walls performance against Liverpool would have taken a whole lot out of the players and with only a couple of days to recover, it was all going to catch up sooner or later.

With us being so desperately shot on numbers not many changes could be made, with only the injured Emile Heskey anddropped Dean Moxey, outfield players to not keep their place. Their vacant positions were filled with two relatively untested kids, Conor Wilkinson and Andy Kellett.

The latter was making his first start for the club. I still have high hopes for both, even though Wilkinson has started to worry me, and I do believe they can both make it at the club. That said, however, we really can't be relying on them. I'm really happy the youth are finally getting a chance, and I hope we continue to do so, we've seen with Vela that it works, but maybe some of them just aren't ready yet. If squad size permits, more loan spells to lower leagues are in order for some.

Reasons these may be but they are not, however, excuses.

We were awful and didn't even deserve the two goals we did manage to score.

Now, a quick word on the Adam Bogdan/Andy Lonergan debate. The Hungarian has to start on Saturday now, no question. He is the better goalkeeper and if we continue to not play our best players we will regret it.

The game was a real embarrassment, and extremely frustrating, as whenever we threaten to build momentum we go andthrow it away again.

However, we should write this up as a freak, one-off game, get over it and respond accordingly on Saturday. New signing Adam Le Fondre will add a much need edge to our attack, and with any luck, Zach Clough will be back from injury to bolster the attacking options.

We can't let this setback keep us down and must go again.