Wolverhampton Wanderers 2 Rotherham United 0

Tedious, dreary, dull, thoroughly uninspiring and a complete waste of time.

If this is what we can expect from the remainder of Wolverhampton Wanderers' season they might as well finish now.

Two teams with nothing to play for can sometimes find the experience liberating and produce the type of football no one thought they were capable of. Unfortunately, neither relegated Rotherham nor Wolves could find it in themselves to be liberated.

The best that Wolves can hope to take from a mediocre season is a ninth-place finish. If only the football on display had been that good.

Mediocrity would have been a step up from Saturday's turgid encounter.

The worst thing about the whole experience, though, was that Wolves manager Glenn Hoddle had had a premonition beforehand that the match might be something like this. If only he'd been good enough to tell the rest of us.

He said: "I thought all week it was going to be an awkward game.

"I smelt that coming. We've worked with a sports psychologist this week on motivation and attitude, and all the things you can talk about.

"But, for whatever reason, we didn't perform as well as we have been."

Which is something of an understatement.

The normally sparkling Seol Ki-Hyeon was asleep. After putting in a display which his boss compared to 'dreaming', he was replaced before half time by Rohan Ricketts.

Rotherham were not much better, displaying all the 'skills' that got them relegated in the first place - over-hit passes, a failure to head the ball any great distance and a lack of understanding about movement.

Not that anyone really moved on the pitch with any vigour until the 25th minute when Jamal Campbell-Ryce briefly shook himself out of his malaise, skipped through a statuesque Wolves defence and was denied by a fine save by Oakes.

That was as good as the first half got.

Wolves sprung into life, if only briefly, in the 54th minute.

Ricketts had let fly from 25 yards, forcing Gary Montgomery into a flying save. The first corner was headed away from underneath the bar by Scott Minto, the second, however, was headed back across goal by Mikkel Bischoff and turned in by Kenny Miller.

It was Miller's 18th goal of the season and helped Wolves extend their unbeaten run to 16 matches.

It was a cruel goal that teased the crowd.

Hinting at something better, it flirted with spectators' emotions before the match descended into the drab spectacle that had stunned them into a stupefied silence.

The crowd raised itself once, in the 90th minute, when, having already seen two minutes of injury time, the fourth official raised the board to indicate that there would be a further three.

The boos that reverberated around the stadium perfectly summed up their feelings on the subject.

While the crowd flitted away, Wolves added a second.

A fine ball by Ricketts sent Miller clear and the striker calmly slotted the ball past Montgomery.

So Wolves won, Hoddle's record stretches to one loss in 22 matches and that is the best that can be said about a match that fell victim to the curse of the meaningless end-of-season fixture.

Scorer: Miller (54, 90).

WOLVERHAMPTON WANDERERS (4-1-2-1-2): Oakes; Naylor (Cooper, 71), Lescott, Craddock, Bischoff (Edwards, 80); Cameron; Kennedy, Olofinjana; Seol Ki-Hyeon (Ricketts, 38); Clarke, Miller. Subs: Jones, Cornes.

ROTHERHAM UNITED (4-4-2): Montgomery; Hurst (Newsham, 85), Minto, Swailes, Barker; Mullin, McLaren, Keane (Hoskins, 70), Campbell-Ryce; Thorpe, Warne. Subs: Pollitt, Scott, Proctor.

Referee: M Pike (Cumbria).

Attendance: 25,177.

Wolves man of the match: The crowd - for sitting through 90 minutes of truly awful football and not demanding money back.