GARY ROWETT felt his side didn’t have the same motivation against Hull City last weekend as they had against Bournemouth – but the presence of a former Charlton and West Ham player in the opposition dugout should at least ensure Millwall’s fans are fully revved up from the get-go this Saturday.
Birmingham manager Lee Bowyer spent a total of six seasons with the Addicks and the Hammers, and also had a spell at another of the Lions’ bitter rivals, Leeds United.
Just for good measure, Bowyer is a West Ham fan.
Bowyer, though, has already shown he is a capable manager. He led Charlton to promotion to the Championship in 2019 in his first managerial job, despite the mess off the pitch.
He couldn’t keep them up and then resigned last March, when they were eighth in League One, to take over from Aitor Karanka at Blues.
Bowyer has lost both of his games as a manager against Millwall, 2-1 at The Den in Rowett’s third game in charge of the Lions when Matt Smith scored an injury-time winner.
Millwall then won 1-0 at The Valley after the season resumed in June 2020 following the suspension of football after the first lockdown. It was another late goal as Jake Cooper scored in the 81st minute.
It’s a monumental scramble just to get close enough to launch a challenge to the top six. There are just three points separating Huddersfield Town in eighth and Preston in 17th in the Championship table.
The margins for error are small, and Millwall’s margins are smaller than most. The long and short of it is they are not scoring enough goals or keeping as many clean sheets per game as in Rowett’s previous seasons.
They are still defensively solid, though, meaning if they could improve their scoring rate just a little it could make a big difference.
The positives are that Benik Afobe and Tom Bradshaw have been more threatening recently, with five goals between them in their last five games.
One area where Millwall have been surprisingly poor is at attacking set-pieces. Their last goal directly from that route was 10 games ago, when Murray Wallace headed in an 89th-minute winner from Jed Wallace’s corner at Barnsley.
Millwall have time before the next four games to work on all of those issues.
“We’ve a week’s break before the next game and then three or four weeks where we’ve got a good chance to work in the week,” Rowett, who also played for Charlton and Birmingham and managed the latter, said.
“I felt we didn’t go about the [Hull] game in the same way – and I’ve spoken to the players about it – as we did against Bournemouth. That type of game, of course, your motivation is high straight away.
“You’ve got to do that here, difficult conditions, cold afternoon, a team that’s going to fight for everything – you’ve got to show that recipe that makes you win lots of games in the Championship to get to where you want to be. But we didn’t do it.”
Meanwhile, the Lions are without Ryan Leonard who has an ankle injury. Connor Mahoney is also unavailable with a hamstring problem.
Bowyer won’t be able to call on former Millwall midfielder Ryan Woods who is serving a three-game ban.
*Updated predicted team after news of injury to Daniel Ballard.
Possible Millwall starting XI: 4-2-3-1: Bialkowski; McNamara, Hutchinson, Cooper, M Wallace; Mitchell, Saville; J Wallace, Bradshaw, Malone; Afobe.
Match odds: Millwall 5/6 Draw 12/5 Birmingham 7/4
Last meeting: Championship (February 21, 2021): Millwall 2-0 Birmingham (J Wallace 2, Thompson 75).
Millwall: 3-4-1-2: Bialkowski; Evans, Hutchinson, Cooper (Pearce 22); Romeo, Woods, Thompson (Ferguson, 87), Malone; J Wallace (Bradshaw, 87); Bennett (Mitchell, 71), Smith (Bodvarsson, 71).
Image: Millwall FC