Millwall have had their BEST start to a Championship season since winning promotion in 2017

Millwall have had their best start to a Championship season since they were promoted back to the level in 2017.

The Lions, who head to Middlesbrough on Saturday, have 25 points after 17 matches. And that is their highest total at this stage of the campaign since they beat Bradford to secure promotion via the League One play-off final.

Millwall had 21 points at the same stage of last season – with other comparisons being 24 (2019), 18 (2017) and 16 (2018).

When the South London Press pointed out those numbers, Rowett responded: “There are things like that we’d track, because you always look to see how you compare to different seasons, and we’d also track that against the play-off average. We’re just fractionally under that by a point or two.

“We’re pretty pleased because we don’t feel we’ve performed to our best level yet. But what we’ve shown is we’re a consistent side. It is no precursor of how we’re going to do over the next 17 games, but it shows we can be in and around it if we can improve a little bit as well.

“There’s a bit of expectation this season and we’ve got to rise to that.

“Our home form has been pretty good. We’ve won four, lost two and drawn three. The Blackburn and Derby games we have created chances and done enough to probably win games. So we’re not displeased with it.

“I watched the Derby game back and while we all felt a bit disappointed not to win it, honestly we had five or six unbelievable chances. I look at Sav’s chance, I look at Benik’s chance, Jed has a good chance one-v-one with the keeper when he’s a little bit wider. Scottie has a shot just over. We created chances and really should have won the game.

“We haven’t blown a team away three or four-nil. But what we have done is consistently try to win games and created opportunities to do that. You can’t do much more than that. A club like ours is not going to pick teams off like Derby and Reading and win three or four-nil every home game, it doesn’t work that way unless you have got a top scorer like Mitrovic or Solanke. You’re talking about them costing about the same as 10 of our players. That is the simple economics of the situation.

“It’s never been a driving force in our team. But money gives you the opportunity to buy some of those top strikers and sometimes the top strikers make the difference in these games where you’re creating chances.”