Millwall boss gives his verdict on Lions’ start to the Championship season

Millwall manager Gary Rowett has given his verdict on his team’s start to the Championship season.

The Lions are at home to Reading on Saturday as they look to maintain there 100 per cent home record at The Den.

And crucially they have a clear week to prepare for the visit of the Royals after back-to-back away assignments at Swansea and Norwich City last week.

Millwall are 10th in the standings.

Rowett said: “When we first got the fixtures through it looked a really tough start. Just by the nature of the fixtures. It settles down a little bit now into more of a normal Championship period.

“If I assess it [the start] against last season I think we won one game in the first nine. I think it took us until the fifth game to win the first match. I haven’t actually looked at the stats of our starts but I’d imagine we’re pretty much on a par, if not slightly better, than most of the previous seasons. We do’t tend to start great.

“To be sat here with two wins, a draw and two defeats – forget the cup game – and going into a period of six games, of which four are at home, I’m not too disappointed. I still think we’re bedding players in. We’ve had some injuries and players coming back that we still need to get them up to speed. This week will be a really important one to do that and if we do that then you start to see the squad looking a lot stronger and a lot more competitive, which we spoke a lot about this season.

“We spoke about last week being a tough week, not just because of there being two away games – just the sheer travelling. There is no easy way of getting out of South-East London, is there? In some ways if I take into account the Coventry game as the start of that three-game week then to come back from 2-0 down and the emotional energy that takes as well, to then travel to Swansea and also come from two goals down again takes a lot of energy and effort to do that. In the first half at Norwich we were really, really good and then it is whether we just run out of a bit of steam or you knew at some point the travelling was going to have an effect.

“Norwich didn’t have a journey like that, they had two home games, it was going to play a massive factor.

“I spoke about it being a tough week beforehand but I was more bothered for the fans. It was tough for them to have to go all the way to Swansea and then all the way to Norwich – for them to travel in the numbers they did was fantastic.

“It was disappointing in some ways how the week ended but to win one, draw one and lose one wasn’t horrendous for us at the start of the week and the games we had.”