IT’S MILLER’S TIME, BEAMS BOSS GARY
ISHMAEL Miller proved he can be the man to fire Yeovil to Championship survival as he downed Sheffield Wednesday despite being less than fully fit.
The Nottingham Forest loanee had not trained for two weeks after straining his hamstring against Doncaster.
But he was patched up to face the Owls and responded with two goals to lead the Glovers to a deserved victory.
Miller opened the scoring at the end of the first half, blasting in from close range with his right foot.
And he doubled the advantage after the break, this time curling the ball into the net from 20 yards, to take his tally to seven goals in 13 games for Yeovil.
After seeing his side claim a crucial win, Town boss Gary Johnson admitted Miller has everything you would want in a striker.
He said: “He’s got a booming shot with both feet and the first goal was a great right foot volley that smashed into the back of the net.
“The second one was a bit of class as he came inside the defender and bent it into the top corner with his left foot.
“It was a gamble to play him and we’ve got to manage him right.
“He won’t be able to run around for 90 minutes but we need him out there for the opportunities he gets.
“He’s got seven goals for us now and they’ve been important goals.
“If we stay up it’ll be because we’ve found a striker that can score every other game.
“People were asking me to find a striker who had that sort of ratio and Ishmael is certainly doing the job for us.”
Wednesday boss Stuart Gray has overseen their rise up the table from the relegation to the safety of mid-table.
But he admitted his side fell short of their recent perfromances as they lost to the Glovers.
He said: “I’m disappointed because today was not up to the standard that we’re used to.
“I don’t know why that was, perhaps Yeovil adapted to the conditions better.
“But we’ve had a fantastic travelling support here and they’ve got a long journey home without anything to celebrate.
“We had five or six players who had an off-day. They don’t mean to do it, but we didn’t win our battles. It was a really unusu- al performance from us.
“I’m just pleased we’ve got a game on Wednesday now to get this out of our system and I’ll be making several changes to the team. Some of those players don’t deserve to keep the shirt.”
Wednesday actually made a bright start to the game and Yeovil needed a decent save from goalkeeper Marek Stech to keep out a shot from Jacques Maghoma.
But Yeovil gradually took control and came close through both Tom Lawrence and James Hayter before Miller struck for the opening goal.
Luke Ayling’s free-kick bounced off Lawrence and fell perfectly for Miller to blast in from close range to make it 1-0.
That was four minutes before half-time, and just five minutes after the break the big striker made it 2-0.
This time Miller held off Oguchi Onyewu before curling an unstoppable shot past Damien Martinez from just outside the penalty ares.
Gray made three substitutions in a bid to find a way back into the game, but the trio made little impact.
And Wednesday’s misery was complete when midfielder Sam Hutchinson was sent off for his second bookable offence after felling Yeovil sub Adam Morgan, making the hosts’ task of seeing the game out easier.