Stoke City 1-0 Rotherham United: James McClean's second goal in successive home games enough for Potters
- Published
James McClean scored for Stoke's second home game running, having netted in the 3-2 win over Brentford
James McClean's second goal of the season saw Stoke City ride out their injury concerns to beat Rotherham United.
A host of absences forced manager Michael O'Neill into six changes from Tuesday's defeat at Swansea.
But McClean's first-half goal, via route one, was enough to give the re-jigged Potters a fourth win of the season and move them up to eighth in the table.
Rotherham barely threatened an equaliser as they failed to build on their midweek win over 10-man Sheffield Wednesday.
It was a fourth defeat of the new campaign for Paul Warne's side, who slip to 19th, and came about through their failure to deal with a long ball midway through the first half.
Angus Gunn's goal kick was flicked into the path of McClean and he lobbed advancing Millers goalkeeper Jamal Blackman to score at the bet365 Stadium for the second consecutive Saturday.
Before the goal, McClean missed Stoke's other best chance of the opening period as a cross from Steven Fletcher was headed down to the Republic of Ireland international but he slid his shot wide.
Blackman made a good low save to deny Fletcher a late goal that would have settled the game but Stoke saw out six minutes of added time to secure victory.
Stoke manager Michael O'Neill told BBC Radio Stoke:
"We knew what type of game it was going to be, the opposition are very direct and try to stop you playing so it was a good reaction from the midweek defeat.
"First half we had more opportunities we could have done better with but the important thing was to get ahead and I never really felt we were going to concede.
"Overall I'm pleased with the lads' effort and we showed good resilience to win the game."
Rotherham boss Paul Warne told BBC Radio Sheffield:
"We played Wednesday, they played Tuesday, I honestly think 24 hours' extra recovery makes a massive difference, they looked a bit sharper than us.
"I probably should have made more changes to freshen the team up, I can't fault the lads' effort.
"We were okay between boxes, we just weren't good enough in the final third. I don't think Stoke created enough to justify their win. So it's disappointing not to take anything."