MILLWALL have taken academy and under-23 players to Coventry City for tonight’s game at the Coventry Building Society Arena.
The Lions travelled to Coventry yesterday with just 14 senior players, including two goalkeepers.
That means that boss Gary Rowett will have to add players who haven’t featured for the side to his bench.
Millwall requested that the game against Mark Robins’ side be postponed, but that was rejected by the EFL.
“We’ve got two outfield players and a keeper at the minute, senior players [for the bench]. That’s where we are,” Rowett said.
“What we’ll have to do is try to fill it with young players from the academy and the under-23s as best we can.
“We’re testing daily, I think that’s the issue at the moment, we had quite a strong outbreak initially and then we had a four-, five-day circuit breaker to try to mitigate the situation.
“Unfortunately, because we’re in London, we’ve had a drip-feed, a PCR coming back positive, a day later another one. We were looking not too bad and then we had another positive result [Monday] morning.
“At the moment it’s just a real challenge. You have to try to get through the games, we understand that, we want to play games. But what you don’t want is two or three players having to come on to the pitch that haven’t trained and have just recovered from Covid after 10 days [isolating].
“It’s a really, really delicate situation at the minute but we’ll put our best foot forward and we’ll travel to Coventry and try to win the match.”
Rowett was asked if ideally he would not use any of the youngsters against Coventry, but he said he may not have any choice.
Rowett added: “With the players that are available most of them won’t be ready because they haven’t played previously, but that doesn’t mean to say they’re not young talents that might embrace the situation should they get on the pitch.
“The reality is in some areas if we get any injuries or any further cases they’ll have to get on the pitch. It’s not a case of whether they can – they’ll have to.”
Image: Millwall FC