Gary Rowett’s verdict on the moment he made Zak Lovelace Millwall’s second-youngest player

Gary Rowett spoke of his delight at being able to hand 15-year-old striker Zak Lovelace a Millwall debut at Coventry City tonight – but added that he was disappointed he could not bring the other academy players on.

Lovelace is the second youngest player to ever feature for the Lions. He was introduced in second-half stoppage time.

Tom Bradshaw’s goal shortly before that clinched a 1-0 victory over the Sky Blues.

Rowett said: “Of course at the end the little icing on the cake was to bring Zak on. I could’ve made it easy and brought a senior player on, but I just thought he’s deserved it.

“We’ve got some young players and that’s something that we want to do a little bit more. We’ve got Billy Mitchell and Danny McNamara already on the pitch. We’ve seen the likes of Tyler Burey and Hayden Muller feature in games.

“Now we’ve seen Zak, the second youngest player ever for Millwall. I don’t know who the youngest was, he must’ve been about 14! We had to get him out of school, he was doing his homework on the way up in the car.

“It topped off a fabulous three points. As a club the only way we can get someone of that sort of value is to produce them ourselves, produce a pathway, and maybe accept sometimes we may lose a game by trying to do it. But long term hopefully we’ll be stronger.

“He chased someone about 50 yards, he’s absolutely lightning by the way. He didn’t have to do that and I said before he came on, if you run back and make a tackle that might be just as important as getting us up the pitch.

“It’s a shame as well because Nana [Boateng] and Bez [Topalloj] have trained really well this week and have just given us a little bit of extra spark. I’ve been really pleased.

“Pearcey [Alex Pearce] coming in, led by example. It was a real captain’s performance today. He was the little bit of glue to keep the team together in moments when we needed to defend.”