MILLWALL controlled their own destiny in the race to finish in the Championship’s top six from the 37th game of the season to the 43rd and given arguably the most favourable run-in of the play-off contenders, no Lions supporter could have been called deluded for thinking about postponing whatever plans they had made in May to instead make contingency ones for the two semi-final dates.
After Gary Rowett’s side won 2-1 against Swansea City on March 14 to go sixth, their remaining fixtures were: Huddersfield Town (then 24th), (West Bromwich Albion (ninth), Luton Town (fourth), Hull City (17th), (Preston (seventh), Birmingham City (17th), Wigan Athletic (24th), Blackpool (23rd) and Blackburn Rovers (ninth).
Yet the Lions won only two of their last nine games, dropping out of the play-off places not just on the last day but in the second half of their last game as they lost 4-3 to Blackburn.
It meant Millwall narrowly missed out on the top six for a fourth consecutive season under Rowett. For a club of Millwall’s relative size – particularly compared to the ones that drop out of the Premier League with bags of money through parachute payments – those are good achievements.
But Rowett and the club want more.
A drastic overhaul would obviously have been required had Millwall won promotion to the Premier League for the first time.
But is one now needed? And if so, what would it look like? We discuss what we think should be next if Millwall want to break into the top six.
Be bold in the transfer market
Millwall broke their transfer record last summer when they paid £1.7million to Fortuna Sittard for Zian Flemming. The Dutch attacker was an unqualified success in his first season in English football, scoring 15 goals.
Recruitment is always trickier for Millwall than most of the clubs they are competing with in the top half of the table due to budget differences. Can the Lions discover at least a couple of gems somewhere, at budget prices?
It can be done. Look at one of the Lions’ top-six rivals in 2022-23, Coventry City, who reached the play-off final. Despite all the turmoil around them in recent years including not having their own ground to play at, their recruitment has been creative. Viktor Gyökeres, Gustavo Hamer and Jamie Allen were hardly household names when they joined from Brighton, FC Zwolle and Burton Albion, respectively. But they have combined for 36 Championship goals between them this season.
Hamer and Allen’s contributions from midfield was 15 goals. Those numbers are particularly pertinent when you compare them to Millwall’s. In the next line behind Tom Bradshaw and Flemming (including in the wing-back system earlier in the season), no player had scored more than one goal before the final day.
That put huge pressure on Bradshaw and Flemming to keep on scoring. That Bradshaw was the only out-and-out striker at the club after January, following Benik Afobe’s departure, only adds to the sense of a missed opportunity. Kevin Nisbet’s proposed move from Hibernian collapsed on January 27. There was little time to go for an alternative and we’re only left to wonder if five or six more goals in the side could have been the difference.
Full-backs
Millwall had no goal contributions from their full-backs this season. The Lions will surely be assessing that this summer.
No one can doubt the qualities that Danny McNamara brings to the team. This reporter was in the Dockers Stand for the 2-0 win over Preston in April. It was at a time when McNamara was shipping a little bit of criticism from fans for perceived below-par performances. But there were a couple of moments when a McNamara tackle raised the noise levels on a strangely subdued afternoon. That’s what McNamara does, that fearlessness in putting his body on the line creating that connection to the stands.
When McNamara was brought back from St Johnstone in January 2021, Millwall had two out-and-out right-backs competing for the spot. McNamara won out over Mahlon Romeo. This season McNamara hasn’t had that competition. Would the addition of an attacking right-back lead to McNamara improving his game again? McNamara went from National League to an established Championship player in two years, so there is no doubting his capacity for improvement. He and Millwall need that competition next season.
And it’s the same on the other side of the defence (in a back four). Neither Murray Wallace nor Scott Malone hit the heights of previous seasons from the point of view of a goal threat. Millwall could be prioritising the full-back positions this summer.
Breaking down defences
This is linked to all of the above. In 2022-23, the Lions beat Sheffield United, Middlesbrough, West Bromwich Albion, Watford twice, yet at home failed to defeat Reading, Queens Park Rangers, Hull City, Wigan Athletic, Bristol City, Huddersfield Town and Birmingham City, all of whom finished in the bottom half of the table. That’s a big expected haul of points dropped.
Millwall didn’t have enough creative players to break down deep defences. The Lions’ attackers are suited to breaking into space on the transition. If defences are packed they want Millwall to go wide and cross, because they are set up to deal with that. In that scenario Millwall didn’t have a 6ft-plus target man to call on, either. It all added up to several frustrating afternoons and evenings at The Den.
Another top-six rival, Sunderland, also operating on a modest budget, had Amad Diallo and Jack Clarke in the wide attacking areas in their system. Not only are they adept at creating in tight spaces, but they scored 13 and nine league goals, respectively, across the 46-game campaign last season. The Black Cats had a variety of attacking midfield options, including playmaker Alex Pritchard and another wide player, Patrick Roberts.
There was a gap between what some rivals produced from that line behind the attack and what Millwall did. The wide players recruited – Andreas Voglsammer, Oliver Burke and Duncan Watmore – didn’t offer anything like the same goal-scoring threat.
Millwall need to try to bring in players in those areas with a knack for scoring goals.
Academy
‘Play the youngsters.’ You hear it every season, read it on the forums. It’s understandable for teams with nothing to play for late on in the season. Billy Mitchell was given his senior competitive debut on the last day of 2018-19 after the threat of relegation had been seen off in the previous game.
But generally players will make themselves unignorable, as Zak Lovelace and then Romain Esse did in the last two seasons.
Millwall’s academy has produced impressive results in recent seasons, especially as there is so much competition on the fabled south London football scene. Unfortunately, the downside is getting picked off by bigger clubs. Lions fans never got to see Darko Gyabi or Samuel Edozie play for their team, though the upside was they generated over £3million in compensation when they joined Manchester City, and Millwall again benefitted financially from sell-on clauses when they moved on to Leeds United and Southampton, respectively. The real frustration was when Lovelace left for Glasgow Rangers for a pittance.
But the evidence is there of hard work paying off, in first finding these players and then successfully developing them. They are national champions this season.
Esse has shown serious promise and perhaps he will look at Lovelace’s experience this season – one senior appearance, totalling two minutes, after making four for Millwall in the previous campaign when he became their second-youngest ever player – and stay put if and when there is interest in him.
The hope is that Esse will push on and then be joined by one or two more next season. Young players who have come through the system and into the first team always excite fans. It creates a buzz and hope for the future.
We’ve been here before, in each of the last four summers, in fact, and as ever the next transfer window will shape the season ahead as the Lions finally hope to break into those play-off positions.
Image: Millwall FC
