Millwall boss has his say on Charlton derby, Jed Wallace’s form and plans to switch up away approach

BY ALEX GRACE

Gary Rowett revealed that he and his Millwall coaching staff were considering playing a different style away from home ahead of Saturday’s 2-1 defeat at Reading.

The Lions were 2-0 down at half time. Goals from Jordan Obita and Sam Baldock did the damage. Jed Wallace replied for Millwall just after the hour mark but the South Londoners couldn’t find an equaliser.

“We were toying with doing something slightly different, said Rowett. “Just because we felt we might need to do something different away from home.

“It was that mixture first half when we had chances to put balls into the box and put Reading under pressure and we didn’t, we maybe tried to over-play. I take responsibility for that.

“If we’re going to try to move forward with a little bit more control and to perform better for longer periods we’re
going to have to take that gamble.

“First half in particular we came away a little bit from what we’re good at which is being aggressive, getting on the front foot and in people’s faces and then trying to play in the right areas. That’s somewhere we need to get the balance a little bit better, and we will.”

Jed Wallace scored his sixth goal of the season when he replied for Millwall in the 63rd minute and his manager was quick to praise him.

“You can see what Jed’s got, he can be the difference with his quality and his ability. What we’ve got to do is give him a better base with the rest of the performance for him to go and show that. I thought he worked hard again, you can see the quality that he has, he showed it last weekend against Stoke. He showed it again this weekend and that bit of individual brilliance could have changed the game.”

Millwall have the perfect fixture to respond next weekend with Charlton visiting SE16, the first meeting between the sides since 2017 and one that Rowett feels does not create extra pressure to win.

“I don’t think there’s [extra] pressure, every game in the Championship there’s pressure. We want to win every home game whether it’s Charlton or anyone else. I know it has an extra significance for the fans and we’ll turn up and try to play with a better overall performance than we did [Saturday] and certainly match what we did last week.”