GARY Rowett couldn’t hide his frustration after Millwall’s 2-1 defeat against Peterborough United at London Road on Saturday.
Tom Bradshaw put Millwall 1-0 up in the first half but the Posh hit back with their first goals in six games as a Johnson Clarke-Harris four-minute second-half double won it for the hosts.
“It’s hugely disappointing,” Rowett said. “I thought Peterborough were fully deserving of their victory, they were really brave and aggressive in terms of how they played.
“We just feel short, again.
“It’s disappointing, that inconsistency. We worked a lot on being very good off the ball and out of possession today to allow us to then go and counter-attack.
“We do that quite early on in the game and look really, really dangerous and score a very good goal. We get to half-time where we’ve not played as well as we can but we’re 1-0 up away from home.
“Second half we changed formation just to see if we could get a little bit more pressure on the ball higher up the pitch because I just felt as though Peterborough were getting into our defensive third too easily.
“But it was the same story. We couldn’t deal with [Siriki] Dembele, I thought he was excellent, he just wriggled out of every single situation and we just didn’t defend well enough.
“You saw that first half. We just kept making foul after foul after foul and allowed them to keep putting free-kicks into our box.
“There were a lot of things we didn’t do well enough today. We didn’t do the right things.
“We struggled to put pressure on them, their movement around us was bright and we struggled to deal with it.
“Whenever we had to step in and defend we just kept fouling, whenever we had to step in and defend and work your feet and not allow the forward players to wriggle past you.
“I don’t think there was anything different all game, we just struggled to get close enough to them.
“And then when we had the ball we just didn’t use it well enough. If you keep turning the ball over against a team that are fairly comfortable in possession then you’re not going to get much out of the game.
“My only hope really was to defend properly, and we didn’t do that today either.
“The first one Clarke-Harris just ends up through on his own behind our back four which is not acceptable. The second one there is a cross in the box and there’s a deflection but he ends up free to make it 2-1.
“If you concede goals like that you’re not going to win any game.
“Away from home you have to weather some sort of a storm every now and again and you have to defend properly. If you do that when you’re 1-0 up then the game opens up and it’s about your quality to go and get a second goal.
“The problem was we didn’t do that well enough all game. Not least the very poor moments were the two goals.
“I don’t expect Clarke-Harris to run away from us in behind our back four to go and score. I then don’t expect him to have a free shot on the back post.
“We didn’t get any free chances anywhere on the pitch.
“I’m disappointed with our performance, disappointed with our inconsistency. That’s part of the challenge at the moment.
“We were sat in eighth before the game. We had a fabulous opportunity to come here and show what we’re all about.
“What we’ve done is put another tepid performance in to stop us getting in those top parts of the league.”
Image: Millwall FC