Millwall boss Gary Rowett urges attacking players to produce game-winning moments

Gary Rowett has told Millwall’s attacking players they “need to step it up” after a sixth blank of the season in Wednesday’s 2-0 defeat to Queens Park Rangers.

The Lions have failed to score in four of their last five fixtures and have dropped to 19th in the Championship ahead of Blackpool arriving in SE16 tomorrow. Benik Afobe is the only striker to net this season.

Rowett told the South London Press: “We’ve got a new-look forward line that hasn’t quite gelled yet. We’ve got players that can cause teams problems and we have to get the ball to them more often.

“I’ve felt in too many games we have the opportunity to play it to the front three, we turn it down and go backwards. We need to be a little bit more pro-active in defensive areas playing forward and the midfield areas. But the forwards also have to create things for themselves. I see other teams scoring goals where they create something out of nothing. We just need to do that a little bit more.

“Just as your job as a defender is to keep clean sheets and defend properly, your job as an attacker is to come up with moments to win games. We need to step. I don’t like to say it because it sounds as though you are criticising, but I’m certainly not. We have got better players than we  are currently showing in those areas. We need to get bodies around them. When you play with three forwards, as opposed to sometimes four forward players, you have to get the wing-backs high and a midfielder joining in.

“At the moment we haven’t quite done that with enough quality.

“We need to go and perform against Blackpool, it’s as simple as that. We can’t keep conceding silly goals and expect to win games.”