GARY Rowett has not ruled out keeping Millwall’s young players with the senior squad for the upcoming campaign.
The Lions have given a number of youngsters the opportunity to play for the first-team in pre-season, including Besart Topalloj, who featured against Crystal Palace and Dartford in the last few days.
It remains to be seen as to whether or not these players’ short-term futures lie at Millwall, or whether a loan move may be a more suitable move to guarantee them extra game time. Isaac Oloafe and Alex Mitchell both thrived in League Two last season for Sutton United and Leyton Orient respectively, and the club have a number of positive relationships with sides at the lower end of the football pyramid that they could utilise.
However, Rowett told NewsAtDen that he would like to keep the younger players at Millwall for pre-season before deciding whether they should be sent out on loan later in the transfer window.
“For all of those young players, we’re looking at the quickest way to get them into the first team,” Rowett explained.
“At the end of pre-season, it’ll be a better chance to judge that. We wanted to give those players like Bes (Topalloj), Tanto (Olaofe), Hayden (Muller), Alex Mitchell, not so much Tyler (Burey), the opportunity to be around pre-season to see how they fare.
“We’ll make a decision. If we don’t think that they’re going to play lots of minutes with the first team, then the sensible thing is to continue their development by playing games.
“Young players need games, it’s okay having them around and playing them for four or five games here and there, but it doesn’t help their development.
“What helps their development is going and playing a game of 40 games at a level that keeps improving, or they come back and they’re actually getting a chance to be in our team. We’ll have a debate about that and we’ll try to make the best decisions possible for those players.”
Photo: Millwall FC