Jon Dahl Tomasson branded Rovers’ performance at Rotherham United as ‘embarrassing’ as they fell to a 4-0 defeat at the New York Stadium.

Rovers trailed after just 34 seconds as Hakeem Odoffin put the hosts ahead.

Second half goals from Ollie Rathbone, Shane Ferguson and Conor Washington saw Rovers fall to their heaviest defeat of the season.

Tomasson apologised to the fans for a performance he said wasn’t acceptable, particularly in the second half where they failed to trouble the Millers backline and shipped three goals withuot reply.

Rovers’ best period came just before half time, with Ryan Hedges and Bradley Dack both having good opportunities, but they failed to build on that in the second half.

“I think if you look at the game conceding after only that many seconds is not good enough, if you look at the rest of the half, was it a brilliant first half? Not particularly,” Tomasson said.

“Did we concede chances in the first half? No, not really.

“Did we create chances? Yes, three, and should have scored from probably the three best chances in the game.

“In the end it was an embarrassing performance and we need to apologise to our fans.”

Rovers have now lost nine of their 14 away matches, and have scored only 10 goals on their travels.

They have still failed to score an equalising goal, and claimed no points when conceding the first goal, and they rarely looked like breaking that trend after the hosts went ahead early on.

“It was a disappointing result and a poor performance,” Tomasson added.

“We spoke about starting the game well, and conceded a goal after 34 seconds, so we didn’t start the game well.

“We had three opportunities to get back in the game in the first half, the header from Dack, Ryan one-v-one and then Sam Gallagher and you need to take those chances.

“We need to apologise to our fans. It was a poor performance.”

Rathbone’s second goal came inside the opening 10 minutes of the second half as Rovers started both halves sloppily.

They had no answer after conceding a second, with Ferguson scoring direct from a corner before Washington added a fourth in stoppage time.

The head coach said: “If you look at the first half I think we gave a stupid goal away after a couple of seconds.

“The rest of the half we had three big chances, probably the biggest opportunities of the game to score.

“The second half the second goal killed us a bit.

“We needed to stay in the game, even with a young side you need to do that better, because when you’re down 2-0 there’s still a chance of getting back.

“It’s of course not good enough.”

Asked about players failing to learn their lessons from similar defeats earlier in the season, Tomasson said: “Staying in the game, we were very soft, not mature in a lot of those situations, and we need to learn from that.

“You can wish it is going faster in that way.

“(A reaction) it didn’t come, conceding that second goal took things out of us.”

TAKE OUT A SUBSCRIPTION...

GAIN UNLIMITED AND UNRESTRICTED ACCESS TO THE LANCASHIRE TELEGRAPH WEBSITE WITH A PREMIUM DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTION