Steve Evans felt Rotherham deserved a penalty against Peterborough

Posted Sunday, October 13, 2024 by PA

Rotherham boss Steve Evans believes his side should have received a game-defining penalty during their entertaining 3-3 League One draw at Peterborough.

James Dornelly opened the scoring for Posh, but the visitors were 3-1 up at half-time thanks to goals from Sam Nombe, Mallik Wilks and Jonson Clarke-Harris.

Joe Rafferty’s own goal and Emmanuel Fernandez’s header earned Darren Ferguson’s side a battling point.

The Millers had the better chances to win it.

Evans said: “Is Nombe’s a penalty? It looks a penalty to me at 3-3.

“He chops a boy and he takes his standing leg, but I’m not allowed to appeal and raise my hands for it.

“We go home the more disappointed of the teams.

“We did enough to win the game. Cohen (Bramall) should score and Esapa (Osong) should do better there at the end.

“It’s two points dropped, of course it is when you’re 3-1 up.

“If it’s based on clear-cut chances we should win the game at the end, and we should win the game at 3-1 up.

“We didn’t think it would be an own goal to get them back in the game, but that gets them up.

“We conceded a sloppy corner and the big boy is decent up there as other teams have found out.

“We are starting to show a bit more and I think we’ll be up there towards the top of the table when the time matters.”

After starting the season with back-to-back home defeats, Posh are now four league games unbeaten at London Road following their comeback point.

Ferguson said: “I was delighted with the performance. I was proud of them, they showed a lot of character.

“It’s our Achilles heel at the moment the goals we are conceding. It’s where we’re at at the moment, we’re a young team and we’re naive.

“I’m really proud of my players to have the belief to keep playing the way we wanted to and having the feeling we would be able to get back into the game.

“The one thing I think is that we don’t deal with adversity quick enough.

“At 3-3, for that five or 10 minutes I wanted to go for the jugular because I thought we could win the game.

“There were moments where they were ruthless and we switched off. To concede three goals in the first half was really disappointing, I thought we dominated the game in the first half.

“I told them to keep believing, get the next goal and see what happens. I thought we would go on and win it, but we just ran out of steam a little bit.”