Gary Rowett delighted as Millwall see off his former club Stoke

Posted Tuesday, April 06, 2021 by PA

Gary Rowett praised his side’s second-half performance after Millwall claimed a 2-1 Sky Bet Championship win at his former club Stoke.

Murray Wallace opened the scoring after 36 minutes following a set-piece, but the Lions were pegged back by Jacob Brown five minutes later.

Mason Bennett then tapped home the winner in the 71st minute after Jed Wallace latched onto Danny Batth’s slip inside the area.

“I’m really pleased, it’s a difficult place to come,” said Lions boss Rowett, who managed Stoke between 2018-19.

“Stoke are not only a very physical side but they’ve got some really good players as well.

“I felt first half they were the better side, we played Jed Wallace around John Obi Mikel thinking that he could run off him and get into good positions, but Mikel’s experience dragged Jed away into areas he didn’t want to be.

“To go in at 1-1 at half-time, I was displeased because were were one up and we conceded a very poor goal but I couldn’t really complain because I could see it coming.

“I thought second half was completely different, we made the change to get an extra midfielder in there and I thought we controlled the game second half and we were the better side, it looked like we had more energy and we moved the ball around.”

Rowett brought on Maikel Kieftenbeld at half-time after Stoke dominated the first half and the visitors began to get much more of a footing in the game.

The hosts notched just two shots in the second half in comparison to their 12 in the opening period as Nick Powell struggled to dictate play after the break.

“I’m very disappointed with the result, very disappointed with the second-half performance really,” said Stoke boss Michael O’Neill.

“We showed two sides of our character today, first half we were excellent, really good play, but we conceded a poor goal after three clean sheets and conceded another poor goal in the second half.

“It was a defensive error that cost us, I didn’t think we’d lose the game to be honest, but the second half our tempo dropped, our energy dropped and ultimately these are the situations we’ve faced a lot of the season, where we’ve not been able to play at the same level for long enough.

“They took Kenneth Zohore off and they went with two more mobile attackers, which we thought they may start with, they brought an extra midfield player on.

“The two goals are really poor goals, that’s the nature of this league, teams difficult to beat that feed off mistakes and that’s a nice trait to have.”