On-loan Tottenham striker suffers fresh injury woe on Millwall debut

Troy Parrott’s Millwall debut did not go to plan – and he could face another spell on the sidelines after trying to play on with an ankle problem.

The on-loan Tottenham striker had missed the start to the Championship campaign with a quad injury.

Parrott stayed on until half-time in tonight’s 2-0 EFL Cup loss to Burnley at The Den.

And Lions manager Gary Rowett admitted the Republic of Ireland international should have come off earlier.

He said: “The disappointing thing is Troy picked up an injury quite early on – you could see it was affecting his movement.

“He had to come off at half time.

“He got a kick on the ankle early in the game.

“You could see he was struggling movement-wise. I probably should have taken him off. It doesn’t look great, but we’ll see.

“It’s a big blow for us because we haven’t scored as many goals as we’d like anyway. Troy was brought in to give us that extra quality but at the moment he hasn’t really been available.

“He’s such an honest kid who is desperate to score goals. he’s worked incredibly hard. Even today when he’s struggling he is trying to stay out there. It’s done for the right reasons.

“Troy is a young lad and he’s been desperate to play and devastated about being injured, he’s stayed out there and tried to continue.”

The chances of more signings arriving sounds unlikely, especially with the government ruling earlier this week that supporters would not be allowed back into stadium from the start of next month.

Rowett said: “We’re like a lot of clubs in that we’d like to do a little more but the news yesterday probably doesn’t help us want to go and spend extra money, due to the fact we’ll probably have no income from the gate receipts for the foreseeable future – which is hugely disappointing.”

Josh Brownhill’s superb long-range effort put Burnley ahead on the stroke of half-time before Matej Vydra converted from close range deep into second-half stoppage time.

Rowett said: “One moment of quality from Burnley has opened the game up a little bit. It was an incredible strike.

“We played around their press quite well and got into some good areas – the difference was the clinical side of the game.

“In the 93rd minute the counter-attack makes the scoreline look a little harsh on us. Overall the performance was pretty good.

“The goal was a moment of quality. Their second goal was when we were opened up chasing the game – I know all about Matty Vydra, we had him at Derby and he won the Golden Boot.

“There wasn’t a massive difference in quality. What they do is make you have to keep working and defending – if you switch off for a second they punish it.

“We got into good areas and Jon Dadi [Bodvarsson] and Hutch [Shaun Hutchinson] have had good chances and others in between.”

PICTURE: KEITH GILLARD