FAN’S VIEW: 24/25 – No.21: MILLWALL AT HOME

OXFORD UNITED 1 MILLWALL 1

The “commentator’s curse” has been around for years. No one seems to know who first coined this phrase. (Ironically it is also unknown who coined the phrase “to coin the phrase”).This curse kind of applies to anyone regularly giving a view on a football team week after week, which I’ve now done for year after year. I’m obviously not going to be made to look stupid a few seconds after praising a player who then makes an elementary error because my output isn’t in real time. Far from it. But when giving a view on player x good or bad I often wonder if they’ll demonstrate the complete opposite in their next game.

I’ve largely written the above because of Matt Phillips. In the last FV I wrote that he was a huge positive. That he looked like a Rolls Royce. That he was a class above and got players around him playing. That he was deceptively quick. That I have hope if he can stay fit and we can get a decent amount of minutes out of him. I can scarcely believe that the Phillips we saw against Millwall was the same person. It was one of the worst performances I’ve seen from anyone in a yellow shirt for some time. Much of the half time talk was that we had to get him off. There was much surprise when he was not removed until the 73^rd minute. Our first change was at half time and two others were made just after the hour. All about team balance I suppose and possibly Des hoping that our no.10 could only get better. Just one of those bad days at the office for him I hope.

I do think though that I get it right more often than I get it wrong. As we’re new to the Championship I’m not that informed on what some of our opposition are all about. For whatever reason I just have this image in my mind based on not much at all. I also wrote this in the last FV “Dour springs to mind but somehow Millwall never conjure up the image of expansive attractive attacking football”. Got that one right and some I’d say.

This wasn’t like any Championship game we’ve seen so far. It looked very League One to me. Even if it had been a League One game Millwall were better at it than us. Really physical. Some of which was legal of course but a lot which wasn’t. Well in my eyes it wasn’t. Referee Anthony Backhouse had a different view. I had high hopes he was going to have control of the game and penalise foul play throughout when he booked Japhet Tanganga in the third minute. Absolutely a yellow card as he deliberately stopped us going forward by fouling Dane Scarlett. Doesn’t matter when in the game it takes place. A lot of referees allow a free hit early on.

What followed from Backhouse though was absolute inconsistency in what was given and what wasn’t. Some pushing and overly physical contact yes, but he appeared to take a different view when Scarlett was involved for the rest of the game. Our loanee was shoved in the back time and time again and got just about nothing, Backhouse being keen to gesture to get on with the game.

On a few occasions the visitors went down really easily on the slightest of touches and won a free kick. Call it shithousery or whatever if it works for them and referees allow it then why not? Isn’t football all about winning? Look where they are in the league and how far back their unbeaten run goes.

The final Millwall yellow card count was four but the second wasn’t shown until the 59^th minute. We didn’t pick up any.

None of this is an excuse for much of our performance. If it had been lower down the pyramid and the game had been allowed to flow I’d have rated our chances of outplaying whoever we were up against. It’s different in the Championship though even against the less pretty sides. I didn’t notice any real standout player for the Lions but Femi Azeez looked decent enough.

I can roughly split this game into two parts. So a game of two parts not “a game of two halves”. Part one, the first 80 minutes or so. Part two, the rest. Although it has to be said we were slowly building towards part two with our substitutions, the first of which as mentioned above came at the break.  

In the first half I only recall us having two attempts on goal and neither came from build-up play where we had kept the ball and worked an opening. The first was when Elliott Moore nodded just wide from Tyler Goodrham’s free-kick after Tanganga’s early foul.

We really do look threatening when we get good high delivery into the box from dead balls. I’ve said this before and I’ll continue to say it until some logical argument against is pointed out. Why oh bloody why do we persist in taking so many free-kicks short, square, sideways and backwards? We get nowhere from them. If we were footballing our way around and through the opposition then yes, by all means. In L1 perhaps, in the Championship that just isn’t happening. I’m not talking about free-kicks deep in our half here but around the half way line. We even do it when we’re quite some way into enemy territory. And when we’re behind and need a goal. Plus it’s not as if referees make those defending such kicks retreat anywhere near 10 yards unless a long kick is to be taken. In the first half Millwall, who were the most long-ball of teams I’ve seen this season, had a free-kick just in their own half. They launched it and created a chance. There then followed a couple of minutes of the game being played in the final third that we were defending.

The second first half chance came from a Millwall mistake. Under some pressure from Przemyslaw Placheta the square ball Joe Bryan played into the centre circle was seized upon by Goodrham who had anticipated superbly and shown razor sharp reactions. He went racing through on goal and from range forced a good save from keeper Lucas Jensen. Briefly encouraging as this was we really should have done better. If Placheta had shown some nous and stayed on-side TG could have played him in for a very presentable chance. I’d expect that to happen in the Championship.

In the first period my impression was that we couldn’t keep the ball. Mrs FV commented that we don’t play at Championship pace. It was a dire spectacle but for all that we hadn’t conceded and the thinking was we’ve just got to get to half-time at 0-0 and then change something. We nearly made it, but not quite, conceding in the final minute of regulation time.

It was this that made my view of our display even darker than it probably should have been. Particularly given the way the goal was scored it became easy to overlook how well our back line had played and the rest of the team defensively too, if at times a little scrappily. Millwall hadn’t created many, if any, real chances. They’d not cut through us and didn’t have players that we thought were bound to undo us at some stage.

Having our captain back was massive. He didn’t have the best of days in our previous home game. Middlesbrough had already bagged four goals before he was substituted in the 53^rd minute. Millwall though are no Boro and their style with an old fashioned centre-forward Josh Coburn, who only lasted until half time, is just the sort of battle Moore relishes. He and fellow centre-half Ciaron Brown handled Coburn very well. Brown at centre-half meant Greg Leigh at left-back. Leigh was not found wanting defensively on this occasion. The right-back slot went to Sam Long. Another player this type of game was made for. What a battler. The physios and medical staff had to keep putting him back together but turns out on the day he was indestructible.

The Lions’ goal was apparently the first one we’ve conceded from a corner. All the way to the far post and headed in the smallest of gaps between Jamie Cumming and the post. Phillips had been marking Tanganga and then he wasn’t. Cumming was being impeded by Azeez and then he wasn’t. Nothing more than happens 19 times out of 20 from a corner. But did it make our keeper a split second too slow to move towards the post? Should he have saved it?

We started the second 45 minutes with Idris El Mizouni on for Will Vaulks. Our number four had been no worse than those around him and at times I thought he was trying to encourage and help his colleagues. This change though meant Cameron Brannagan dropped deeper and he was more effective from that position where he can see more of the game ahead of him and has more space to run into. El Mizouni upped the quality more toward tier two standard.

Just past the hour Scarlett and Placheta were replaced with Mark Harris and Ruben Rodrigues. I felt sorry for Scarlett. He’d taken a battering. I would still have put money on a battered Scarlett being more likely to get us the goals we needed than a fresh Harris. Leaving the ground I heard one guy ask more than one person “who coaches Harris because he can’t control a ball”. In the time he had, Sparky didn’t do a lot to counter that assertion. RR didn’t weaken us.

The change that I thought really made the biggest difference was when Owen Dale came on for Phillips in the 73^rd minute. He was all energy. Everything started to get quicker and when he’d got into it seemed to get us going properly. He got annoyed when the best passing option wasn’t selected or the delivery wasn’t as good as it should have been. Did he prove a point that he should be much closer to a starting place than most of us fans have thought from what we’ve seen so far? Unfair to say that he’s no more than a L1 player. Millwall now certainly appeared to be much more worried.

Finally Will Goodwin for Leigh in the 84^th minute. I and others had been imploring Des Buckingham to have introduced him earlier. Why not as the replacement for Scarlett instead of Harris? Or getting Goodwin and Scarlett on the pitch together to see if they can work together? Anyway, we usually say Des knows best. Have been a bit surprised over this though.

At last we had genuine physical presence in and around the heart of their defence. Millwall were becoming even less comfortable.

A minute after Goodwin’s arrival we were level. You’ll not see many, if any, better goals than this at the Kassam this season. By now we had Millwall on the back foot. They couldn’t get out. A clearance was picked up by Brown who quickly got the ball out to Dale who knocked a short ball down the line to El Mizouni. He turned back on himself and hit a pass, which bisected two closing defenders, to Brannagan who had found enough space to be able to control and move the ball out to Goodrham as a challenge came in. TG was centre right just outside the penalty area. The visitors had good defensive shape but we know how talented Tyler is even in tight situations. RR’s little run helped too. He took a defender with him and ended up occupying two giving the dad-to-be enough space to rifle the perfect shot from the D into the top corner. I can’t recall the last time I saw a ball struck so well.

What a talent Goodrham is. He keeps getting better and now has added dead ball delivery to his armoury. What’s he worth? What would we do if a club with serious money came in and offered £4-5m in the transfer window? I’d say sod off. Or no way unless the sell on clause was ginormous. Or £10m. Nah, “he’s one of our own”. He won’t want upheaval with a baby to look after. Plus we need him, boy do we need him.

Those last 10 minutes or so saw the team and home fans come to life. Spellbinding attacking football. Couldn’t take your eyes off it. How many had already gone? Didn’t witness any tbh.

Now it felt like there was only going to be one winner. Backhouse though only added four minutes which was way short of what it should have been. One goal, plenty of subs and a couple of minutes delay when a Millwall player was “injured” which conveniently came when we had real momentum.

The stats, which obviously cover the whole game, make for realistic reading. We had 51.5% possession. Both teams had three shots on target. They had 11 corners to our two. They had 27 touches in our box to our 11 in theirs. We made 48 clearances to their 18. This suggests to me that we didn’t get at them enough. The expected goals stat supports the 1-1 draw. Us 0.9, them 0.88.

Coming from behind and playing as we did at the death made this feel like a win but the harsh reality is that we’ve dropped two more home points and have picked up just this point from the last four games. Still relegation form.

There are plenty of teams off form though. None of the teams in the bottom half of the table won.

We’re averaging a point a game. 46 isn’t a figure that gives much hope of survival based on previous seasons. But currently five teams are averaging under a point a game and three others the same as us.

I wouldn’t take that much comfort from this though. Most teams get more of their points from home fixtures than away. There’s always an exception to the rule and that’s very much been QPR so far. Hull marginally so but of the other teams on the same points as us or fewer they’re all better on home soil. Us and Preston have played 10 at home and eight away. Hull, Cardiff, Coventry and Luton have played nine home and nine away. Pompey have played nine away but only seven at home. They might be five points behind us but have two games in hand and got a draw on their travels on Saturday. They were though two up at Swansea before being pegged back. Argyle have played 10 away but only eight at home.

It won’t have escaped anyone’s notice that our next two matches are away. If we don’t improve on our travels we’ll soon be in the bottom three and we don’t want that.

Some small changes to the relegation (best) odds after each round of games. Argyle have shortened to 8/15. Pompey have lengthened to evens. We’ve slightly lengthened to 7/5 but are still third favourites for the drop. QPR who got a creditable draw at Watford have also lengthened to 7/4. PNE have lengthened to 4/1 and Hull remain at that price. So there’s better value around now.

Cardiff (11/2) have one point fewer than us, and Luton (18/1) & Coventry (25/1) have the same. Punters clearly think the Hatters and the Sky Blues will survive quite easily. And that Frank Lampard is not Wayne Rooney.

I wonder how the odds will alter after our game at Home Park this coming Saturday. I can feel the tension already. Argyle may have let in 10 goals in their last two games but they were at Ashton Gate and Carrow Road. Like us they’re miserable away from home having picked up just two points.  In Devon they’re different altogether. Their last six league results at home beginning with the earliest first: Sunderland won 3-2, Luton won 3-1, Blackburn won 2-1, Preston drew 3-3, Portsmouth won 1-0, and Watford drew 2-2.