Millwall boss left unhappy at “disrespecful” facilities provided by Reading

BY ALEX GRACE

Gary Rowett criticised Reading for the facilities that his Millwall side were forced to use during their 2-1 victory at the Madejski Stadium.

The Lions moved up to 13th in the Championship standings after their sixth away league win of the season with substitutes Matt Smith and Mason Bennett on target.

“We certainly weren’t hoping to hold our team meeting in a concourse that was about minus-eight,” said Lions manager Rowett.

“We just felt it was a tad disrespectful when you’ve got a stadium that I’m sure has plenty more room. It gave us more motivation, it was something we spoke about and we used it to our advantage.

“Reading are a fantastic team, they have as good a front four as any in the division. They’ve certainly got the quality in the likes of Joao to open the game up at will. You’ve got to be on your guard defensively.

“Part of our gameplan was to utilise the fact that Reading had played on Wednesday night against Brentford and they’d expended a lot of energy and were unfortunate to lose the game late on. We just felt as though there was an opportunity to start well, we did in the first 15 or 20 minutes when we hit the bar, pinned Reading back but just couldn’t find the extra moments of quality.

The Lions fell behind in bizarre fashion against the run of play, Alfa Semedo seized on two Millwall errors to score from 40 yards.

“We concede a goal against the run of play that is disappointing, to be 1-0 down in such a stupid fashion. We huffed and puffed to half-time, didn’t play with any quality, looked as though mentally the goal had set us back and we couldn’t quite get our game going. Then at half-time I had to bring the two wide players on and change from 5-3-2 to 4-2-3-1 and it did the trick.”