‘I liked our response’ – Millwall boss Rowett praises resilience as his side fight back for point at Rotherham

Gary Rowett hailed Millwall’s resilience as the Lions fought back to claim a point in a 1-1 draw with Rotherham on Tuesday night.

The Lions fell behind in the ninth minute when Daniel Barlaser powered a penalty through George Long after Jake Cooper had been penalised for a sliding challenge in the box.

But Zian Flemming lashed home a 25-yard thunderbolt to draw Millwall level on the stroke of half-time, and the visitors had a number of chances after the break.

Millwall are still without an away win this season, but Rowett felt there were plenty of positives to take from an improved performance at the New York Stadium.

“It was a much better away performance,” said Rowett.

“Apart from going a goal down, which is symptomatic of how we’ve been away from home where we give opportunities to the home team. You can’t do that at places like this, particularly in their first game under a new manager. That’s always going to give them a bit of a lift.

“I’ve no complaints about the penalty. Coops actually defended really, really well all night, it was just that one moment, but sometimes you live and die by that as a defender. Longy guesses the right way, but I had no complaints about that decision.

“What I liked was our response. We didn’t go under, we didn’t shrink and I actually thought we controlled quite large parts of the game. I think they had one shot on target, which was the penalty. Other than that, our keeper has had nothing to deal with. We’ve had Tyler Burey’s chance in the first-half, we’ve had Zian’s free-kick which the keeper saves and Tom Bradshaw’s had a couple of brilliant, brilliant chances, so there are lots of things to be enthused by. We can still play with more quality and we can show a little bit more composure, but certainly with a new formation, there was some bits that I really liked.”

Flemming broke his Millwall duck with a header in the 2-1 win over Blackpool last month, and the Dutch midfielder doubled his tally for the season in style with a sumptuous strike. Unsurprisingly, Rowett was full of praise for the former Fortuna Sittard man, who is becoming more and more influential.

Rowett added: “Zian is a talented boy and he’s going to benefit massively from physical, direct games like this. He’s gonna learn and get better and better as he goes along, but it’s a great left foot strike. He takes the free-kick with his right foot, he scored a header the other, so he’s got a little bit of everything. He’ll get better and better.”