GARY Rowett admitted that Millwall needed to be more clinical in the final third if they were to get a result against Huddersfield Town on Saturday afternoon.
The Lions were limited to a handful of chances due to the visitors’ defensive set-up, with just four of their 18 shots hitting the target. Despite mustering 71 percent possession and an xG of 1.19, they were able to find a way through, while the Terriers scored from one of their two shots on target across the 90 minutes.
It was a stark contrast to previous games against struggling opponents, where Millwall have regularly managed to pick up points by grinding out narrow wins. They scored early against the likes of Cardiff City, Stoke City and Reading, holding on in all three games to secure the points despite coming under immense pressure.
Huddersfield, however, showed that there is a way to down the Lions, becoming just the fourth team to do so at The Den, and Rowett agreed that Neil Warnock’s men managed to pick up the win by frustrating his side on Saturday afternoon.
“When you get those moments, they’re rare because of the amount of bodies in and around the box,” he said after the game.
“They played a centre-half holding midfield today to do a job on Zian. They played a centre-half at right-back to give them more size set-piece wise. They’re entitled to do whatever they want to do, they got a result.
“They won the game and they move on really happy, so it’s a good tactical set up by Neil. For us, you have to make the most of those little moments of space and little moments of quality in and around the box. We couldn’t quite do that today.
“It was a different game. It was frustrating in certain ways because it wasn’t a game where you could just play forward early. I think you can play forward early, but if there’s no space to play into, it’s very difficult.
“We had to be patient and we had to move the ball around, and that’s something that, whenever we’ve had these type of games, we need to be better equipped to do that.
“At Millwall, you can’t suddenly be equipped to deal with everything with your squad. There’s certain strengths we have and certain weaknesses we have. Today, we just couldn’t quite find that moment open the game up.”
Photo: Millwall FC