MILLWALL boss Gary Rowett said he didn’t use the circumstances around their game against Coventry City as extra motivation for his players.
The Lions wanted the match postponed as they had just 14 fit senior players on Tuesday including two goalkeepers, but the request was rejected by the EFL.
Rather, Rowett urged the side to match the intensity they had shown in arguably their best performance of the season, the 3-1 win over Birmingham at The Den earlier this month.
Millwall followed that up with one of their poorest displays of the campaign to lose 2-1 at Peterborough United.
The Lions hadn’t played since that game 18 days previously, and despite all the disruption caused by injuries and positive Covid-19 cases, they dug in and Tom Bradshaw scored the only goal with 11 minutes left.
“If I’m being honest, my message was the usual one,” Rowett said. “We needed to produce a performance with the intensity of Birmingham and not the intensity of Peterborough.
“That’s been our challenge all season. When we play with good intensity, when we show a little bit of fight, a little bit of drive, that’s what you’ve got to do to win games away from home.
“Some of the tactical nuances of that performance are things that are important but they’re not the most important, it’s the attitude of the players and the desire to want to do the hard yards and the difficult things on an evening that win you the game.
“On nights like this I think the players do it predominantly themselves as well because they turn up, they know our backs are against the wall, they’re good characters in there and they know we’ve got to go and put a big performance in. And they know there’s very little we can do to change it [the Covid situation].
“I left Scotty Malone and Benik [Afobe] on the bench for different reasons but I felt we were going to need impact late on. I felt we were going to have to get to the 60-, 70-minute mark with the team that we had and then we might need that impact.
“Really tonight, the credit has to go to the players. They’ve put in an incredible shift, they’ve shown a little bit of character.”
Millwall travel to Bristol City on Sunday aiming for back-to-back wins for the first time since October.
Rowett added: “What we’ve got to do now, it’s been like all season, we put a really good performance in and then we’ve got to try to back it up.
“A good team backs it up.”
Image: Millwall FC