Michael Appleton offering no excuses for Blackpool's dreadful defeat to Rotherham United

The Seasiders can have no complaints with the result and the scoreline as they returned to action after a 10-day absence.

Despite initially getting off to a bright start, Michael Appleton’s side were second best for the vast majority of proceedings.

They were outplayed in all facets of the game and looked sloppy across the park, especially in midfield where their lack of quality came to the fore once again.

They also looked completely devoid of ideas in the final third and failed to test Rotherham keeper Viktor Johansson.

Blackpool, who were searching for their first back-to-back wins of the season, momentarily rallied in the second-half after a dreadful first, but it still wasn’t enough to stop the Millers scoring two more goals late on.

“As a coach for a number of years, all I want to do when I lose a game of football is lose it in a certain way,” Appleton said.

“I want my team to show character, regardless of who they’re up against in terms of ability or physical presence, just show a bit of personality and I thought we lacked that tonight.

“It’s hard for me to take because I want to get myself on the pitch and show what I mean by personality and that’s difficult.

“We were a little bit reactive. You’ve only got to look at the three goals, Rotherham have got first and second contact in our box. If that happens against any team you’re going to be struggling but when you’re facing a side that are used to putting the ball in the box and getting numbers in the box, we made it easier for them more than anything.

“There’s no doubt they can do that. They’ve done it already this season and they’ll do it again throughout the season, but we just made it far too easy for them and that’s difficult to take.”

When asked to put a finger on why it went so wrong for his side, Appleton added: “Not really, no.

“A couple of them almost looked a bit jaded, a bit mentally fatigued which is a hard excuse to use really because we’ve not played on Saturday.

“I don’t know if that’s affected us in any way, shape or form but they’re going to have to get used to it because after Saturday we’ve got a two-week break before we play Norwich and then later in the year we’ve got the break for the World Cup.

“I’ve got no excuses. At the end of the day we were second best in a lot of areas, especially in the most important one which is the box.

“At times, they got really good blocks and nullified dangerous situations in their box and we didn’t do it enough in our box.”