Strugglers Struggle with Struggling Lions

MILLWALL
V
DONCASTER ROVERS

First of all, my apologies to regular readers for not being around for the last two matches.  Unfortunately I've been prevented from blogging by first my house deciding to fuse the day before the Barnsley match and then by my employers rather premature celebration of the festive season.  Anyway, normal service has been resumed!

Well the title says it all as Rovers again face side that aren't doing so well and as such, have a game where it is important to get something.  Millwall sit in the precarious 21st place that Donny would give their eye-teeth for at the moment.  Being 6 points adrift of safety, Rovers fans would happily take precarious over desperate!

MILLWALL 


I was just pleased withour performance because after quite a number of changes, it was a youngish side and this added some freshness and energy.  We have to replicate that at home to Doncaster and away to Leeds next Saturday, which would make it a good week. Kenny Jackett.

Millwall 21st?  Well they aren't kidding me!  A Lion's Den isn't usually a place to go if you're looking to come away with something.  When you look a little behind the table position, you see that they are where they are due to a disasterous September (yes, worse than Donny's).  Current overall form puts them 7th in the league.  When they win, they do so impressively, when they lose, they do so narrowly.  Couple that with 7 draws so far this season and you're left wondering whether we have  team that on occasions is not getting the rub of the green.

In the international break, England gave a text-book demonstrattion of how to defend by pressing the ball-carrier.  The basics are first to choose when to press him and second, when the other players see him being pressed, they tighten their marking of their man.  The result is that if the ball-carrier does manage to fend off his close attention, he has a difficult ball to play to retain possession.

If you look at Millwall's performance against Crystal Palace, they were certainly pressing the ball-carrier at times, but the marking job away from that was lacking.  But it's halfway there, its just that the other half is the difficult bit.

Up front and the crosses tended to be just a little too hard and high and the shooting was wild, as it was from Palace.

That thing I said about tight man-marking when pressing the ball carrier?  If you wtach the highlights against Bristol City its there all the time and the Robins could have had a cricket score had they taken the chances it caused.  Its almost like there is over-confidence in the man going to the ball.

The highlights v Blackpool were very short but once again you saw that Millwall's opponents were getting lots of chances.  Maybe there could be something in this match for Donny, especially when you consider that Donny have bettered Millwall's results against 2 out of 3 cases against the opponents I saw.  That's not going to happen many times this season.

DONCASTER ROVERS

So what's been happening while I've been gone? Well, in a nutshell, we embarrassed ourselves against arguably our most bitter local rivals; then we signed a lot of players on loan and then we put in a decent performance and got a rare clean-sheet against Watford on Saturday.

El-Hadji Diouf - "Best in the League"

The Willie McKay scheme is now getting into full flow with 5 of our 11 starters on Saturday being so-called shop-window players.  So far, we've seen El-Hadji Diouf, heralded by Dean Saunders as "the best player in the league" standing out as the best of our signings.  Good to see Dioufy grabbing the headlines for the right reasons, sad to see him picking up a hamstring injury that will surely see him not featuring tomorrow evening.

The rest?  Well we will see.  I think its fair to say Habib Beye (Oh Habib Beye) had a good debut on Saturday the Marc-Antoine Fortune also had his moments.  Obviously, the experiment really starts from here on.  I have no doubt more will join the ranks in the January transfer window making for even less familiar line-ups.

Listening to Dean Saunders' pre-match interview, it seems that he has similar look as his predecessor in terms of injuries.  Rovers have 14 players out at the moment, which Deano finds unbelievable, stating he has never seen anything like it in his career.  Welcome to Donny, Dean!  Imagine your difficulties without a Willie McKay able to find players to plug gaps.

Jeckyll and Hyde v Hyde

IPSWICH TOWN
V
DONCASTER ROVERS

During our last meeting the Tractor Boys effectively ploughed up the Keepmoat and the Rovers with it, as probably the most threadbare Rovers team put out in many-a-year was trounced by six goals to nil.  

For that game, Rovers were unable to field a recognised striker and so faced an impossible task.  Famously, Sean O'Driscoll threatened to walk out of the post-match press conference if anybody asked a stupid question and, when he received his second question,  "So Sean, how do you feel?" he duly followed up on the threat.

As some kind of indication how weakened Rovers were that night, the mid-winter freeze of 2010/11 season resulted in the home and away fixtures with Ipswich being only seperated by 4 other matches.  At Portman road, just 3 weeks before the massacre at the Keepmoat, Donny were unfortunate to come second in a five-goal thriller, which included a mad spell with 3 goals in 3 minutes.

This season, remarkably Ipswich have also conceded more than any other team but with 19 goals for, aren't so bad going forwards.  Donny's record is a little more balanced.  No team has scored fewer goals than the Rovers and only Ipswich have conceded more.  0:0 doesn't look a wise bet tomorrow.

IPSWICH TOWN

I got on well with the supporters and the manager [Sean O'Driscoll] at the time and I really enjoyed myself there. I have some great memories from my time at Doncaster  - Jay Emmanuel-Thomas

Looking at Ipswich's results so far this season, it would seem they are either very good (3:1 victory against Brighton, 3:0 against Bristol City and Coventry) or really bad (1:7 against Peterbrough, 2:5 versus Southampton and last week's 4:1 away defeat by Millwall).  If Paul Jewell follows the instructions of the fans, he's stuck in the Portman Road revolving doors.

First video up was that game at the New Den and the defending was as shocking as you would think.  Centre-backs stayed in the middle and I have no idea where the full-backs were for two of the Millwall goals.  It was simply a case of an attack finding a man in acres of space in the inside right or left position.  A good shot was fired in, parried and the rebound could not be dealt with.  Millwall were using those inside positions all game.

Against Palace, Ipswich lost 0:1 and it was another very poor goal.  A really poor Palace free-kick that should have been eaten up by any decent defence was half cleared and then a lot of ball-watching occurred as Palace took their opportunity.

Portsmouth, and here I saw a slender Tractor-Boys victory, but all in all I'd have to say that I've gained more hope from watching the frailties of their defence than I've gained fear from watching their attack.  Jimmy Bullard pulls the strings in midfield and I did see a few snappy strings of passes involving Bullard and Lee Bowyer.  Now they are two names that also bring a lack of nonsense to mind!

The other player I liked in an attacking sense? Carlos Edwards.  Against Portsmouth he had a couple of forays down the right flank that looked difficult to deal with.

There's hope for Donny in this one.  That defence is as bad as I've seen, with one unfortunate exception.

DONCASTER ROVERS

I can see it coming together here. The pace of training has gone up massively from testimonial to world cup final standard. - Dean Saunders

Well I am sure there wasn't a dry eye at the Keepmoat on Tuesday evening as Billy Sharp showed us all what love, heartbreak, pride and professionalism mean.  How could he play through such pain? In Billy's words, "that's what my little man Luey would have wanted.

Well, Billy, you gave Luey one fantastic present.  

Rovers lost the match but that's in many ways a trivial detail.  There were positives.  For the first 30 minutes, Rovers played one of the promotion contenders completely off the park.  El-Hadji Diouf did not look as unfit as I suspected he was, indeed it looks as though he and Billy could form a brief but happy relationship.

But the problems at the back remain very obvious.  

Billy Sharp's family have received a lot of support from the Martin House Children's Hospice during this very sad time for them.  The Viking Supporters cooperative have set up an means of donating to this very worthy cause.  If you would like to make a donation, you can do so my clicking here.  Alternatively you can send a donation by SMS by following the instructions below (clicking on the image will take you to a page with all terms and conditions)

Thank you.