Rotherham United will have hoped for a better start to life in League One after suffering Championship relegation last season.

The Millers appear to have something of a relegation hangover and are 13th in the table as things stand with 15 points from 10 games.

Paul Warne’s side do have at least one game in hand over the majority of the teams in the division and are just four points away from the top six, so they’re not too far out of reach of play-off qualification.

The Millers picked up a huge win on Saturday, hammering high-flying Coventry City 4-0 at the New York City Stadium.

Key to that was forward Michael Smith, who put in arguably his finest performance of the season–grabbing two goals and an assist and earning a Whoscored rating of 10.

Smith joined Rotherham in January 2018 and has been used regularly by Warne ever since.

We put a spotlight on his performances this season to assess how well he has started the 2019/20 campaign.

Smith has made 13 appearances for Rotherham this season but has been in and out of the starting XI, making six starts and coming off the bench on seven occasions.

The 27-year-old is predominantly a centre-forward but has been used across the frontline by the Millers.

Despite playing 749 minutes this season, Smith’s only goals of the season came from the penalty spot against Coventry. Both were comprehensive finishes but that is a goal every 374.5 minutes, which in all honesty is not good enough.

The striker has hit the target with eight of his 24 shots this season, which gives him a shot accuracy of 33.33%–not awful but certainly something that can be improved, especially if he is regularly restricted to opportunities off the bench.

The forward also turned creator against Coventry whipping in a fantastic cross for Matt Crooks to head home but that was only his second assist of the season, which again is not consistent enough production. 

Smith’s passing stats suggest that he is too sloppy with the ball in the final third, as he has a pass accuracy of 31.9% in that region and an accuracy of 24% for passes into the box, while his overall accuracy, 64.5%, suggests that his distribution should be tidier in general.

One area he has excelled is in the air. The 27-year-old is regularly asked to win first-time balls played forward to allow his teammates to grab the knockdowns and he has done that really well this season–winning 52% of his 102 aerial duels so far.

After his performance against Coventry, Smith deserves a run in Warne’s starting XI but he will have to provide a better return, in terms of goals and assists, than he has so far to repay that faith and help the Millers climb up the League One table.

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