Millwall fixture on Boxing Day set to go ahead

Millwall have said that they believe their fixture with the Swans will go ahead on Boxing Day after manager Gary Rowett said “they’ll be in a position to field a team, at this moment in time, provided they don’t get any more positive results.”

Millwall saw their last league match fall victim to the increasing number of Covid-19 cases within the country and in football in general but its clear they are now expecting the Boxing Day fixture to proceed as planned.

“We’re a mixed group at the moment,” Rowett told the South London Press. “That’s the difficult bit. We came back yesterday after a bit of a circuit break, which is not ideal.

“Players did some work remotely that we can log and make sure everyone has done it. It’s important people keep ticking over and doing their work but it is not quite the same.

“We had about 11 train yesterday with one injured player semi joining in to a session. The challenge is always the same, if you have got someone with Covid then some players can do a little bit of light training in their houses, because they have got access to facilities, and some players are ill and can’t do anything.

“We’ve got quite a few that might be out of isolation on Thursday but we’ve got some still with symptoms, so they probably won’t be out of isolation on Thursday.

“I think we’ll be in a position to field a team, at this moment in time, provided we don’t get any more positive results. We’ve had a couple more staff positives but you can isolate the staff – they aren’t quite as important.

“Every day it changes. I read a little bit from one of the Premier League managers and he said he couldn’t pick his team until the day of the game and limited to what work he can do on the team. Every club is going to be in a very similar position.

“Over half the games were off in the Football League and Premier League, it clearly shows you football is no different to society and that cases are massively rising.

“We’ve just got to crack on through as best we can.

“The only solution is probably to try and crack on as safely as you can. We’re now getting tested every day but we’ve had players who have been fine on a test and three days later have flagged up positive. There are still some vagaries around that.

“You have to accept that if you have a really weakened team then unfortunately you have to go out there and get on with it, do the best you can. One team might have a full squad and one team might have 10 players missing. It’s clearly not going to be a level playing field but, at the same time, we want to crack on with the season for now. It seems to be the only plausible solution.”