Stoke City moved out of the bottom three with a 2-0 win over Rotherham at the Britannia Stadium, with the Millers ending the game with ten men.
The Potters sneaked ahead from a corner in the 21st minute when Lewis Neal crossed from the right to pick out on-loan Paul Warhurst who climbed brilliantly above his marker to send the ball from ten yards looping over Mike Pollitt and into his bottom right-hand corner.
Shaun Barker could have equalised in the 29th minute with a wonder goal when he ran from outside the box to beat three men but unluckily for Rotherham his left-foot strike hit the post and was cleared to safety by Marcus Hall.
City scored their second in the 40th minute with a goal arriving from nowhere when recently out of favour Andy Cooke hit a 25-yard effort that dipped perfectly leaving Pollitt stranded and Stoke two goals up.
The Potters looked comfortable going into the second half, but the scoreline could have been so different with Rotherham rattling the woodwork twice, Guy Branston being the other unlucky man.
Stoke looked more like a promotion side and could have put the game beyond Rotherham's reach when Neal supplied another cross for Chris Greenacre, but his header was stopped on the line when Chris Swailes lunged across to save the Millers.
The tension seemed to get too much for Rotherham especially John Mullin when he attempted to head-butt Wayne Thomas after the Potters defender reacted angrily to a late tackle.
Defeated boss Ronnie Moore said: "We have had enough chances to get something from the game and fair enough when Mullin got sent off it got a bit frantic but there you go.
"The officials were not good and I am not one to blame refs, but we need to march on and win games, it just did not go for us."