Gary Rowett wants to see Millwall bounce back at Sheffield

Gary Rowett has challenged his Millwall side to produce an instant bounce back from Saturday’s 2-0 defeat to Luton by delivering a big performance at Sheffield United tonight.

The Lions were below par at the weekend as their seven-match unbeaten run in the Championship came to an end.

Asked if Millwall needed to dust themselves off and go again against the Blades, Rowett replied: “That’s exactly what we’ve got to do. You can look at fixtures and say a home game against Luton is one we feel we can go and get the three points in, knowing the next two are going to be tough matches at Sheffield United and home to Stoke. But we didn’t perform and that’s the Championship. Sometimes the games you feel you should go and take something from you don’t.

“Then it’s up to us to do what we did against the likes of West Brom, go and put a far more resilient performance in – see if we can have the right quality at the right moments.

“Sheffield United are on the same points as us. They have got a very strong team, it’s a team that played in the Premier League in the previous two seasons and they are getting used to a new style under a new manager. It will be a really tough game at Bramall Lane because it always is.

“We’ll have to go there and perform. That’s the challenge of this division.”

Harry Cornick’s double consigned Millwall to a third league loss of the campaign.

“We didn’t do enough to put Luton under pressure consistently,” said Rowett. “We didn’t play how we need to play at home in front of our fans. Up until their goal we started quite well and played with a little bit of intensity, but we didn’t play with that for long enough.

“We all know at home that sometimes you have to have that mixture of intensity, aggression, front-foot mentality and then the quality, if it is there, hopefully wins you the game. We didn’t do that for long enough periods. We lost too many of those duels in the first half of the game and it made it a difficult match.

“In saying that, Luton have had two shots on target and scored them both. They were very clinical and goals change games and how everyone thinks about the games. We’ve had some good chances ourselves but at the moment we can’t seem to be able to put those chances away at the right times in the matches. It’s disappointing on the back of the run we’ve been on. You feel a little flat and deflated because you’re hoping we can kick on again. You almost feel like you have to take two steps back again, which is quite hard to do.

“I think we had chances to deal with the ball and the attack [for Cornick’s first goal]. Whether the first header is fortuitous for Luton, it just sends Hutchy the wrong way a little bit, then we don’t quite seem to react from there. It’s certainly a goal where I wouldn’t expect one ball played hopefully forward ends up being a goal. It’s a great finish by Cornick.

“The second is similar. It’s a transition and we have opportunities to play forward. There were too many times we had those moments and went backwards. We spoke to our players before the game because for the first 20 minutes at Barnsley we did the same. Again we got caught trying to overplay. They counter attack us and score a very good finish. Most goals are avoidable when you slow them down. They were two very poor goals from our perspective to concede.

“We’ve got to very quickly get back to the run we’d been on previously.”