GARY Rowett feels Millwall are only “two or three players away from being a really good side” – as he praised his Lions team for still being in with a chance of a top-10 finish despite their problems this season.
Rowett, his coaching staff and a number of the Millwall squad missed games after testing positive for Covid-19 late last year.
And 11 players have missed at least a month of the season through injury, with some – such as Troy Parrott, Kenneth Zohore, Connor Mahoney, Ryan Leonard, Billy Mitchell and Murray Wallace – missing more than two months.
But Rowett feels all that adversity will make them stronger.
“I missed three games [after testing positive for Covid-19] as did virtually all the staff, and we had six or seven players that got it and then we had to come back very quickly and we lost that game [against Coventry],” Rowett said. “We were miles off it physically, as you’d expect.
“We’ve had two players who’ve broken their feet, two broken toes this season, two dislocated shoulders and countless situations where you wouldn’t expect to be in that position.
“But we’ve tried to get through it. We’ll be stronger for it.
“I think we’re two or three players away from being a really good side when all our injured players are back and we do some business in the summer.
“That’s credit to us. We finished eighth last season, we still have a chance of finishing in the top 10 this season. We’re only a point or two away.
“For that, I think the players deserve an awful lot of credit.”
Millwall signed Parrott and Zohore this season to try to solve their goal-scoring problems.
Those signings didn’t work out and Rowett admitted he wants to get the last two games out of the way to get cracking on summer plans, when the acquisition of a striker is a priority.
“We brought in Troy Parrott and Ken Zohore to give us that extra little bit but unfortunately for different reasons neither of them were available for very long spells,” Rowett said.
“Even Ken coming on today, he’s not really match fit so we’re just putting him out there to see if he can get us something.
“We’ve had a lot of misses. The likes of Hutchy [Shaun Hutchinson] out, Ryan Leonard out, Matt Smith just for the last 20 minutes to be able to put something different on the pitch. I’m sure he would have got on the end of one of those crosses today.
“But it is where we are. A lot of teams have suffered. It’s been a very unusual season. We still have two games left and we want to try and finish a lot stronger.
“We’ve had four games now where we knew the games were really, really tough, to play the likes of Swansea, Brentford, Bournemouth, Watford – top, top teams.
“Maybe at this stage of the season with a lack of options it’s been a push too far. But, again, I’m proud of the players, they’ve done really well at times this season.
“The final two games, I’d like to get them out of the way quickly for the main event – which is preparing for next year.”