Millwall boss proud of his players as they overcome Covid-19 issues to win at Coventry City

Gary Rowett was proud of his Millwall players after they beat Coventry City 1-0 on Wednesday evening – despite positive Covid-19 cases and injuries depleting his squad and disrupting their build up.

Tom Bradshaw’s strike with 10 minutes remaining was enough to seal all three points against the Sky Blues.

The Lions had not played since December 11 when they lost 2-1 against Peterborough United. Their fixtures against Preston North End and Swansea City were both postponed.

The EFL turned down an application from the South London club earlier this week to also postpone the Coventry match.

Rowett handed a debut to 15-year-old striker Zak Lovelace in stoppage time and also had youngsters Nana Boateng and Besart Topalloj on the bench.

Rowett said: “I couldn’t be more proud of the group of players we’ve got in there. We’ve had a horrendous two-three weeks. We thought the game had to be off because of the EFL protocols.

“We had 13 fit players and essentially two players that came back today without training and had to go straight into the squad. It’s a difficult one, we understand it. We want games to go ahead.

“All of our players wanted it to go ahead. They wanted to play the game, but you have to think about the players and whether that’s safe to do that with a limited number of players.

“I have to say it was a brilliant performance, really dogged, really hard-working, great energy and little moments of quality as well. We just needed to put the final touch on it.

“Then Bradders goes and scores a goal to put the gloss on a resilient performance – a defensively excellent performance. That’s his fifth goal in about six or seven games. He’s in a real hot streak of form now.

“Its difficult, you don’t know how players are going to react. We’ve seen players up and down the country that aren’t able to play after 10 days because it affects players in different ways.”