GARY Rowett’s selection options are limited by injuries for the visit of Nottingham Forest to The Den on Friday night.
Rowett will likely pick the same back four that started in the 1-1 draw at Birmingham City last Saturday, with Shaun Hutchinson a doubt with a rib injury.
Millwall’s midfield performed impressively at St Andrews, with Ben Thompson showing how well he can operate on the right side of a four-man midfield, another new position for him this season. He got involved from that wide area and tested Connal Trueman with a first-half effort.
Four midfielders were involved in the Lions’ goal, with Jayson Molumby breaking up an attack, Thompson being involved twice before Jed Wallace assisted Shaun Williams after Mahlon Romeo had also contributed.
Millwall have lost just once in Rowett’s six games in charge and are unbeaten at home.
Sabri Lamouchi’s Forest were unbeaten in five games, including four wins, before losing 1-0 at home to Neil Harris’ Cardiff last weekend.
They are fourth in the table, but only six points ahead of Millwall.
“I think they’re a good side, they’ve got lots of good forward players,” Rowett said. “They have lots of other good players but I think particularly in forward areas they’ve got the ability to win games and open you up.
“At home they play slightly differently to away from home. Away from home they tend to defend very deep and be very tactically organised. Lamouchi has proved that he’s a very good coach.
“They’re a very good side on the transition and counter-attack so we have to be mindful of that. We’re going to have to be wary of what they’re going to try and do and make sure we don’t open up too many spaces too early in the game.
“But, we’re at home and we’ll have to take some gambles in certain areas, play with the tempo we want to play with. It’s up to us to make the running to try and win the game.”
Ryan Leonard, who had been expected to be back for the Christmas schedule, has suffered a setback with his knee and could miss an extra month.
Jason McCarthy is also several weeks away from a return from a foot injury.
Forest had 32 shots on goal against Cardiff but only two on target. Lamouchi had no complaints about the result.
“The numbers, they are clear,” he said. “But we can do no more than that. We can only try to hit the target. We did create big chances.
“Normally we are very efficient with the goals we score from the number of chances we create. This time it was the opposite.”
Forest sold their initial allocation of 1,023 for the fixture before securing an extra 607 tickets for the North Stand.
Possible Millwall starting XI: 4-4-1-1: Bialkowski; Romeo, Pearce, Cooper, M Wallace; Thompson, Molumby, Williams, Skalak; J Wallace; Bradshaw.
Match odds: Millwall 6/4 Draw 11/5 Forest 19/10
Last meeting: December 29, 2018: Millwall 1-0 Nottingham Forest (Tunnicliffe, 9)
Image: Millwall FC