GARY Rowett said he is not ‘getting carried’ as he reflected on a much-needed win for Millwall over Stoke City.
Kevin Nisbet scored in the first half before the Lions had to survive a late siege on their goal from the visitors to win 1-0.
Millwall boss Rowett had praise for several players after many put in impressive shifts throughout an eventful 90 minutes.
But he said that was the bare minimum he expected from his Millwall stars, who have ended a run of three defeats in all competitions.
Rowett said: “I’m pleased for the players. I knew our fans would get behind if we put the relevant energy and relevant aggression into the game and that’s what they want to see and that’s what I thought we gave them certainly in the first half.
“I thought we were very good first half. I thought we played on the front foot, I thought we played forward early, I thought we supported quickly, I thought we played off those second balls and caused Stoke quite a lot of problems with that performance. We scored a goal of course, it’s a lovely finish from Nissy, just the calmness around him when he’s in and around the box. He’s one of those players where it looks like everything just slowed down for him.
“It’s a good goal and maybe he had one or two moments after that. Stoke changed at half-time, they made a good tactical change. They brought players on which I think again summed up our [dominant] first-half performance and I thought they benefited from it.
“They’ve got a lot of good wingers, good one v one, and I thought they started to stretch the game a little bit, open the game up a little bit and we had to make similar changes to try and stop it. And I thought second half we’ve dug in and had to be resilient.
“We could have passed the ball a little bit better, we could have maybe stepped out a little bit earlier but it is what it is and we had to ride our luck a tiny bit towards the end but I thought it was a good clean sheet, a good three points and much needed after last week.”
Rowett also gave an insight into what he told his players after Millwall got through that late Stoke fightback thanks to goalkeeper Matija Sarkic and his right-hand post in stoppage time.
The Lions boss added: “I said to the players [after the game] ‘look, I would say congratulations for the character we showed, but I think as a group we expect that every week’. And we expect those types of performances every week from our senior players.
“Coops [Jake Cooper] was excellent [and] the back three, Sav [George Saville] was excellent today in a game that I think really suited him. He’s brilliant at competing and those little balls that drop, scruffy balls, that he ends up coming out with.
“So yeah, there was a lot of good performances, a lot big performances, but do I think we can do better? Yeah. Do I think we can improve? Yes. Just like I didn’t get carried away last week [after the Norwich City defeat], I’m certainly not going to get carried away this week. We’ve got another big game coming up before the international break [away at Birmingham City].”
