In the end, Millwall’s feisty clash with West Ham United was exactly what it should have been: A great advertisement for Championship football. There was a sneaky suspicion that the media hype and live TV coverage by ITV was in place with the expectation of the game being marred or even overshadowed by unpleasantness – which in the end failed to materialise and two historic sides simply renewed their age old rivalry and battled it out on the pitch.
Perfect.
“Thrilling” was how Sky Sports summed it up afterwards- and for the neutral it probably was. Millwall’s fast, aggressive start was badly refereed, true – but we’d have been justly proud if our own players had come out of the starting blocks in that manner. However bad the start, Nuno’s men deserve credit for a fightback that wouldn’t have been possible under previous managers.
After dredging up all the unpleasantness from yesteryear, there seemed almost a sense of disappointment from some mainstream news outlets that they had ‘only’ six arrests to blazon across their headlines this morning. As the Guardian puts it perfectly:
“…Watched by an outrage-ready media multiverse, something unexpected happened at the Den. A really good football match broke out.
Piroe was one of many West Ham players who didn’t turn up as West Ham were bullied for the first 60 minutes
Not wild or violent. No shameful scenes that nobody (trans: everybody) wants to see. Not in the stands or the streets at least: the only really sour note was an allegation of spitting against West Ham’s Taty Castellanos, which will now presumably be investigated.
Otherwise this was a thrilling, high-quality 2-2 draw between Millwall and West Ham, a game where for the full 90 minutes nothing outside the Den’s rattly corrugated stands seemed to exist..”
No ugly scenes to embarrass or humiliate two historic clubs and no wild, derogatory labels to be applied to football fans sounds good to me.
And for all the disappointment at the way in which our West Ham team played the first sixty minutes, they did good to rescue a point and remain second in the Championship table with a three week hiatus starting now.
We’d certainly have settled for that ahead of the season kicking off in August.
I wonder if that may be the end of us starting an away game with Taty and Piroe. We just don’t seem to have a defence that can withstand alot of pressure so maybe we need a bit more cover ahead of them. Pablo and Kante both pressing their claims and Soucek should be an option after the break. We didn’t spend much in the last window so if the ownership situation gets resolved I hope funds could be made available for a centre half and a right back.
Posted elsewhere on numerous sites …
How Max Kilman almost cost West Ham in draw vs Millwall
It was evident Kilman was struggling at The Den after a poor opening 45 minutes.
The defender wasn’t much better in the second half and in one particular moment, almost cost the Hammers dearly.
AGAIN …. when will NUNO see what this man is doing to us …
Why can’t Morato play left side centre back ?
Where’s the new left back too ?
The media must be so disappointed this morning, all that build up for nothing. I didn’t even know that ITV still had the option to show live league games before yesterday, 6 arrests? I wonder how much that cost them per arrest? 😊⚒️⚒️
Our defence is not good and our quality starters didn’t turn up.
Nuno made the right subs and we pulled it back when Millwall faded.
I’ve looked at the spitting allegation video and I can’t see anything that looks anything other than perfectly normal, I’d be amazed if that one holds up.
Kante was lax and ended up taking a red card for it, it’s a one match ban for that offence so he’ll sit the next game out.
I had thought that our quality would have counted and had this down as a win by a two goal margin, but the quality didn’t turn up.
Agreed that 2nd in the Table is not bad – and if Fulham manage a draw with Man U then Spurs will be bottom going into the break