I'm hugely grateful to Silver for his "just back" reports and always enjoy them. But I think he is terribly wrong about our performance yesterday, as being simply a tenacious defensive performance similar to many of our away fixtures. Well, ok, it may be similar to a few of our away performances, but that's not to our credit. On Saturday we were playing away to a team three points below us in the league, a team who have been a model of inconsistency. All we did was spoil the game. Hack, hoof and defend. It was a pretty horrible performance: boring and utterly threatless upfront. We were set up to nick a draw which in the end we really did not deserve. It was, managerially, utterly gutless. We are going nowhere playing like this and it is the reason our attendances this season have been surprisingly poor. For Christ's sake let us attack a little. Middlesbrough have a very suspect defence. That game was there for the winning. But really only good luck got us a point.
Absolutely spot on with your post, Monkey! The bit I’ve highlighted just sums up what many of us feel about Rowett’s mindset, and how he wants to set his team up. It has been this way for a very long time (since Davidson left), but this season, as poor as the league has been, and as poor as the team has been in a number of games (for whatever the reason), the results, stats and league position don’t lie! All of it makes fantastic reading as far as JB is concerned, and there isn’t a chance in hell of him sacking Rowett, because in his mind the manager is doing a great job with the meagre resources available to him!
Whilst all of the above is true, it isn’t as if Rowett has been the only Millwall manager who‘s never had a pot to piss in, recruitment wise! Many past managers have felt the pinch just as much, but some of them (though not all), still managed to produce a certain quality of player who played in teams that gave us good, often exciting, attacking football! We rarely see any of that with a team that Rowett picks!
Is this ‘anti attacking football’ of Rowett’s just down to him believing that this is how he believes all his players should play? Both Derby and Stoke supporters would probably say ‘yes’ to that question, as when he managed both of those clubs, they hated the style of football he gave them! Might there be another reason? Perhaps, since Davidson‘s departure, Rowett has lost confidence in himself as a manager, and this could account for him not knowing his best 11 each match, as well as persisting stubbornly with formations and substitutions that none of us can understand?
Whatever the reason, it’s left many of us supporters watching dull, tedious football, where the team just seem to ‘exist’ every week under Rowett’s management style - with no fear of promotion or relegation - and finishing anywhere between outside of the play off positions, and mid table! Some supporters on this forum would be quite happy to accept that, if it meant staying in the Championship every season, whilst others want to see a bit more ambition in how we play and how we win. The famous words from a poem by Robert Browning, “a man’s reach should exceed his grasp” suggests that, to achieve anything worthwhile, a person should attempt even those things that may turn out to be impossible.
Perhaps Rowett should take heed of those words, think about what they should mean to him as a manager, and act upon them immediately!