Most touches and passes – Millwall boss has praise for Mahlon Romeo after impressive return to the team

Mahlon Romeo made an impressive return to Millwall’s starting line-up on Saturday – with manager Gary Rowett praising the defender’s approach while out of the team.

The 25-year-old made his first Championship start in more than a month in the 4-1 victory over Sheffield Wednesday.

Romeo had been on the bench since Danny McNamara was recalled from his loan at St Johnstone.

But the right wing-back had the most touches at the weekend – 79 – and also completed the most passes (59).

Rowett reckoned Romeo deserved Millwall’s fourth goal, even though Tom Bradshaw claimed a touch on his low strike.

“Young Danny came into the team and deservedly kept his shirt,” said the Lions boss. “You want competition for places. Mahlon hasn’t had too many competitors.

“You see different things from players when they are out of the side and to be fair to Mahlon he worked really, really hard to maintain his condition and he’s been really supportive to Danny.

“Sometimes you see players out of the team and they perhaps feel a little bit disappointed with it and show that. But Mahlon has backed Danny and tried to help him. He has given him little bits of information.

“I felt it was the right time to put him back in. I just felt the game would be quite tight and someone like Mahlon has got the ability to open the game up a little bit with a powerful run forward. That turned out to be the case.

“Sometimes when you have been out the side you have got a little bit of a point to prove, you see a player with a little bit of fire in the belly – playing how you want them to play week in and week out.

“Danny had played seven league games on the bounce and acquitted himself really well. He will be a top, top player for us moving forward.”

Rowett made three changes for the visit of the Owls with Jed Wallace reporting a tight hamstring. McNamara and Ben Thompson were both rested, although the latter came off the bench and impressed in the second half.

The Millwall manager said: “This is probably the season where it is easiest to have lots of options. Normally we’d be going Saturday-Saturday for large periods of the season and there is no real excuse not to keep the same team and players in if they are doing well. But when you play three games in a week you can’t always use the same player for all of those.

“You could see it after the Norwich game on a heavy pitch and difficult conditions. We had to work incredibly hard and it is difficult to maintain that little bit of bite and zip to physically perform. You could see that early on in the Sheffield game, the likes of Maikel [Kieftenbeld] and Lenny [Ryan Leonard] struggled to get to the same level.

“I’ve got options with the likes of Danny and Mahlon to mix it up for different games.

“I said to the lads before the season started that lots of them will probably play 30 games, I didn’t think anyone would be able to play 46 games – or it would be very difficult in certain positions to do that.

“That’s why I made the decision with Jed [Wallace]. He had come to the end of many games in a row and said himself he felt a bit blunt, that he didn’t feel he was playing with the same sharpness and enthusiasm.

“Having Danny and Mahlon competing for a place is going to be really good for us.”