Since beating Sheffield United last November, the Millers have not won away from New York Stadium.
Carlisle had been assistant manager for the majority of that time, but he was in caretaker charge for Tuesday’s 4-1 loss at Hull City. The performance was a far cry from the battling draw with Leeds United four days earlier in South Yorkshire.
“Only they know what they’re thinking. “I just don’t think we can back up our home performances,” Carlisle mused.
“We put in a good performance on Friday, and then for whatever reason, whether it’s the squad, how thin it is, or the energy levels dropping off, I don’t know, but we just can’t seem to get a foothold in the game, and when we concede, it’s almost as if we’ve given up a little bit frantic and scrambled.
“It’s a mystery for me, it’s obviously the elephant in the room. We’ll continue to try and address it because we’ve got an away game on Saturday but only they know what’s going on inside their heads.
“I don’t know if they lost heart, I thought they got a bit scrambled.
“I didn’t think they lost heart throughout the whole game, I thought they kept going and I thanked them for that at the end but when you shoot yourself in the foot as early as we did, it does become difficult and it’s easy to get a little bit frantic. You end up chasing it.
“Probably the most disappointing thing for me was the second and third goals – they’re things we’d talked about, we’d showed, the players were aware of them and we just deal with them well enough.”
Calrisle explained a bit more about why he was so unhappy with Hull’s second and third goals of an excellent performance from their perspective in the ninth and 20th minutes.
“We have to deal with the cross,” said Carlisle of Jaden Philogene’s goal to add to Tyler Morton’s opener. “It’s come in; it’s hit Dexter (Lembikisa) on the back. He’s got to head that ball. As a young player learning the game who wants to play in the Premier League, he has to head that ball.
“Then Philogene backheels it through the legs, and that’s something that has to be dealt with better.
“The run off the back of shoulders for the third goal was again something we’d covered; it was too easy. There was a mix-up between a centre-half and a midfielder.
“They both knew if he was off the shoulder, the centre-half had to take him, and if he was in front, the midfielder had to take him, and they didn’t deal with it.
“It’s disappointing as much as anything.
“We plan everything thoroughly every single day because they’re professional athletes playing in one of the most competitive leagues in the world, and they deserve that.”
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