GARY Rowett has accepted the responsibility for Saturday’s defeat to Blackburn Rovers, admitting that he got the team selection wrong.
The Lions named an unchanged lineup for their trip to Ewood Park, but they were unable to repeat the same performance that earned them a 2-1 win against Blackpool in mid-September.
Rowett admitted that he didn’t want to change a winning team, instead hoping that consistency would be able to help his side pick up their first away win of the campaign.
“We won the game previously, even though it was before the international break, so I wanted to give the players an opportunity to see if we could build something and build a little bit of momentum,” he told NewsAtDen.
“It’s been a really tough thing to do this season, it feels so sporadic and difficult to do, even just getting games back-to-back when we win them feels like it’s quite hard.
“We did make some adjustments. We played a midfield three, we played a bit flatter within that system, so again we tried to do one or two things within that system to try and see if it would help. Ultimately, we got more or less the same result.
“That was the thinking behind it. Unfortunately, as a manager, sometimes you have to hold your hands up and say that it didn’t work.”
The issue that Rowett faces is the fact that Millwall need to improve in both attack and defence, so making a tactical adjustment in one area of the pitch could leave the other area in an even worse position. In Lancashire, he opted to play George Honeyman in a deeper role to create a flat midfield three behind Zian Flemming and Benik Afobe, although the Lions ended up having just two shots on target.
However, Rowett doesn’t believe that the tactics cost them the game over the weekend, instead highlighting the individual errors that allowed Rovers to go 2-0 up after two quick-fire goals in the second half.
“It’s possible, reasonably well, that you can get bodies forward [using a 5-3-2]. If you go away from home and you don’t pass the ball well then the front two end up being isolated. We don’t really get that at home, so it’s not really an issue at home, but I don’t think our structure and shape had a massive bearing on the result, I think it was our mistakes that we made. That’s what affects the game.
“If you look at the Championship, every time we’ve scored first we’ve won the game and kept a couple of clean sheets in those games. Every time we concede, it almost works the other way, so you can see how important that first goal is.
“If someone bends one in from 30 yards, you obviously hold your hands up. If you make a mistake, it feels like a bitter pill to swallow sometimes when you know how important that first goal is.”
Photo: Millwall FC