Steve Evans talks to www.themillers.co.uk
Millers boss Steve Evans believes supporters will see the best of new signing Chris Maguire in the coming weeks as he continues to gain match fitness.The Scottish attacker arrived at AESSEAL New York Stadium late in the summer and missed out on the club’s pre-season tour north of the border.
However, the Millers’ boss is confident that the former Sheffield Wednesday man is getting closer to the required levels of fitness.
“He was good the other night when he came on. He’s getting fitter, we can see it in training and the sharpness is coming back,” he explained.
Evans continued to explain that Maguire had been putting in the hours outside of training but insisted that wasn’t unusual for a member of the current Rotherham United squad.
“He has, but they all do here. We pride ourselves on our boys being fit. You might miss the likes of Mattock and Smallwood for three days but it doesn’t matter because these boys are as fit as they’ll ever be.
“Our problem is when you get players coming in a month late that are lacking match fitness because you can’t give them that unless they play matches.
“Big Faz Rawson had three or four weeks down having minor surgery at Derby and we have to work with him now to get him up to the levels that we expect our team to be at fitness-wise.”
With the international break on the horizon the Millers boss is keen to keep his players’ fitness levels at their peak and insists that it will business as usual on the training ground, despite the lack of a fixture.
“They’ll all be in. The guys that have played a lot of football will get the ‘free weekend’ off all being right during the week, but they’ll all be in every day."