Millwall captain might need to keep fine in place – with optimism high of a play-off challenge next season

BY RICHARD CAWLEY
richard@slpmedia.co.uk

Alex Pearce put a ban on play-off talk last season – and the Millwall captain might need to enforce that again when the Championship campaign resumes on September 12.

The Lions only missed out on the top six by two points with their promotion hopes finally ended in the penultimate fixture at QPR.

But Millwall signed off in style with a 4-1 thumping of Huddersfield on the final day and the loan signings of Tottenham striker Troy Parrott and Stoke midfielder Ryan Woods, who has quickly signed up for a Den return, only fuels optimism that the SE16 club should be looking up – not down – the table.

“As skipper I’m in charge of the fines,” said Pearce. “Any time people do wrong things around the training ground I’ll address it and give them a fine, depending how big or small the crime is.

“We’ve got a list of fines that we adhere to, which will obviously stay private.

“But one of those rules were that we didn’t want any talk of the play-offs. We just wanted to focus on the next game. We even took it down to one training session at a time. Let’s just focus and not get ahead of ourselves or build things up too much.

“That was the motto for the whole season. I know it got highlighted towards the end, because we were chasing the play-offs, but that’s been what we’ve done – focused on the next game and keep talk of targets and the play-offs to a minimum.

“That served us well. To finish where we did – eighth – is very successful.”

The Lions were four points shy of the 72 they achieved under Neil Harris in the 2017-18 campaign, when they also finished in the same position.

But the following season was a grim grind to safety. The 44 points banked in 2018-19 would have seen them finish bottom this time around.

Millwall had top-six form under Rowett, who took charge towards the end of October.

“He’s certainly very, very experienced at this level – and you can’t buy that,” said Pearce, who has played more than 300 matches in English football’s second tier.

“He knows how to get results. He’s a manager who gets the best out of his players and the group. Man-management wise he deals with players very, very well. You can talk to him about anything really. I always think that is a good sign of a manager, when he is approachable.

“He’s done a very good job with us and tactically he’s done some things with us in terms of how he’s set us up as a team. He has tweaked the formation and our shape a little bit and it’s given us that little bit of impetus. It maybe caught teams on the hop with us going to a back five, certainly to start with. We got some really good points on the board because of that.

“He has to take great credit – but so do the players on the pitch. It really is a team effort.”

Steve Morison described it as “a minor miracle” that Millwall stayed up in that 2018-19 campaign.

“If I said certain things then people’s careers would be over,” he told the South London Press at the time. “As the manager has alluded to, there has been a lot of crap going on this year. What I would say is it is a minor miracle we have stayed up.”

Contrast that with Pearce’s take off the back of Millwall exceeding expectations.

“The group this year has really come together,” he said. “I know a lot of things get said about the team spirit, but it is certainly right up there with the best I’ve had in my career.

“They are a great group of lads all working together for the same goal.

“Last season just didn’t quite go for the club. Sometimes that can just happen – you can have difficult years from time to time.

“But this season the club has shown we can certainly establish ourselves at this level and look to even push on and strive for better and bigger things.

“It’s where the club, manager and players want to go – we want to keep improving and learning every single day and see where that takes us.

“I’ve loved every minute of the season and I’m looking for another successful one next year.”

It is a sign of progress that there was such disappointment following the 4-3 reverse at QPR – ending the Lions’ hopes of chasing down the likes of Swansea City, Forest and Cardiff.

“Against QPR we kind of felt we had let ourselves down a little bit because we got ourselves into a position where we’d got so close,” said Pearce.

“As a squad we couldn’t help but feel a little bit negative at that time.

“But as the days have passed we soon came to realise what a fantastic season it has been for us.

“We take into account where we were this time last year – the club was fighting relegation. For us to be fighting for a spot in the top six is a big achievement and shows how far we’ve come.

“The manager and staff deserve great credit for that. Since they’ve come in they’ve been fantastic.

“After the match against Huddersfield the manager put on a presentation for the players just to emphasise how well we’ve done since he came in – that we would be a top-six team. The lads deserve great credit, each and everyone in the group has contributed in some way.

“It’s been a successful season on the whole for us, no doubt.”