Millwall’s international players will get extra rest to guard against Championship burnout

Millwall’s international players are set to report back to pre-season training a week later than the remainder of Gary Rowett’s squad.

Tom Bradshaw is part of the Wales squad which has Euro 2024 qualifiers against Armenia and Turkey on June 16 and 19 respectively.

Northern Ireland, who have selected Lions midfielder George Saville, pictured right, have fixtures on the same dates against Denmark and Kazakhstan.

Winger Romain Esse has been picked by England U18s for the Lisbon International Tournment. They play Norway today before taking on Australia on Sunday. Finally comes a clash against the host nation, Portugal, on June 13.

“The international players have not had six or seven weeks break, mentally and physically,” Rowett told the South London Press.

“They’ve had to train and play throughout.

“All you try to do is that they will come back probably a week later than the others. It’s very, very simple.

“They need the same recovery so that they don’t come back and end up feeling fatigued early in the season, because they haven’t had enough recovery time.

“Romain will come into that category. We look at how much they have trained. We get all the details of what they have done in training – distance-wise and intensity-wise – and then we try to come up with a decent plan to allow them to still feel like they’ve had a break.

“Someone like Rom has done a little bit less, in general, over a season. Someone like Bradders, who played 40-odd games, it would be slightly different but some elements are still the same.

“We’ll assess it as we find out their plans. Someone like Aidomo (Emakhu), he was on standby for the U21s for Ireland and didn’t get in, so then you have to adjust and have a couple of plans.”