Millwall’s checkered past would follow them to the top flight if they could earn a miracle promotion as the season winds down
Long shot it may be but with two games plus the play offs to go, Millwall’s ascension from the Championship remains a live prospect. A club like few if any others in the English game, with a fanbase who love nothing more than the distaste their club engenders in others, in the top flight? If nothing else it would make the 2025-26 Premier League unlike any other.
It is still unlikely to come to that, but the prospect is altogether more live at the end of Easter Monday than it was at the start. The incumbents of the last two playoff spots, Coventry City and Bristol City, were both felled by relegation-threatened opponents. Middlesbrough, on the outside looking in, ended up with nothing to show from their trip to Sheffield Wednesday. Meanwhile Alex Neil’s side more than kept up their end of the bargain, responding to a bruising defeat at Blackburn on Friday with a resounding 3-1 win at Norwich.
They will still need more breaks to go their way. With two games to go they sit three points out of sixth with an inferior goal difference. They will need at least one of Coventry or Bristol City to drop points in both games. If Middlesbrough win out they’d likely need fifth and sixth to collapse. All that while beating Swansea and Burnley in their remaining games.
Impressive win over Norwich
On Monday’s evidence, the latter is not beyond the realms of possibility. Millwall have now won five of their last seven at a stage of the season where momentum seems to be the Championship’s most valuable commodity. Their performance against Norwich couldn’t help but inspire wondering of what might happen if they both make the play offs and win at Wembley.
“The way they approach the game is like grassroots football for the professional game,” says CBS Sports analyst Nigel Reo-Coker, a man who knows all too well how tough an away assignment Millwall is. “They would bring an electric atmosphere, an underdog energy, As their song goes, no one likes them, they don’t care. It’s the club that’s from the wrong side of the tracks and they’re proud of it.
“They love being an underdog, love facing adversity and being against the world. The atmosphere for the Premier League in every game would be utterly electric, you couldn’t put it into words, you’d have to be in the stadium.”
In pure footballing terms, Millwall would make for an intriguing counterbalance to so many others in the league. If footballing philosophies often put one in mind of inverting full backs, ball-playing center backs and a coveting of possession above almost anything else, Millwall are a reminder that identity can be about more than pretty passing and neatly coordinated moves.
Perhaps they could play keep ball, but it would not be very Millwall. On the field they reflect who the club have been off it. The caricatures of hooliganism have become exactly that, but the Lions take pride in their anachronism, in going against the grain and winding up the other team.
When it’s all in harmony, The Den roars.
Norwich averaged the second most possession in the Championship going into this game. Millwall’s response was simple. If you want the ball, keep it? We won’t need it for long. Hit the big men up top, get the ball out to the flanks and win your duels. When it works as well as it did today, Millwall’s football is a thrill to watch and a nightmare to play against.
A high-pressing frontline forced a mistake from the team in yellow inside just eight minutes, the sort of clumsy flick around the corner to no one in particular that you couldn’t imagine is in the Millwall training manual. One cross then another rained on the Norwich goal, Femi Azeez’s hitting what seemed to be an unsuspecting Mihailo Ivanovic. The Den didn’t care, cheering their “big f—ing Serbian” to the rafters. They know what they like around these parts. It wouldn’t be the last occasion they showed their adoration of the 20 year old from Novi Sad.
For all Norwich’s possession, they could scarcely find a way through the Millwall line, failing to register a shot until American Josh Sargent curled wide with half an hour to play. A Shane Duffy header from a dead ball gave them hope just before the break, but they were never about to win a set piece match with Millwall. Ultimately, it would be the last shot the throttled Canaries took. The excellent Azeez had flicked home one corner in the first half, 6ft 2in Ivanovic would get a second for himself and third for Millwall in the second.
As news filtered in of results elsewhere, The Den’s anticipation was palpable. Two more wins and who knows, perhaps a third season in the top flight after that brief flirtation between 1988 and 1990.
What would they bring to the Premier League?
Given the reputation of Millwall’s travelling fans that might give some in the Premier League sleepless nights, it must be noted that the club has worked tirelessly to distance itself from the worst of its fanbase, to reach out to the communities in south London who would never dreamed to enter The Den in the 1970s or 80s. Its community trust is award-winning, working tirelessly to promote inclusion in Southwark. The club has adapted as its neighborhood of Bermondsey has; the route to The Den might be foreboding but once you are outside it is the same rich tapestry of craft beers, burger bars and insipid Oasis on the speakers.
Still, the edges have not been entirely smoothed. As Jean-Phillipe Mateta, not only the victim of a kick to the head by goalkeeper Liam Roberts, but also the subject of merciless chanting in its aftermath, can attest, there can be a cruel sense of humor to the Millwall repertoire. On Monday, every Norwich throw in was greeted with a surge of jeers, a misplaced pass drawing almost as much delight as an own goal. Few ground do schadenfreude like this one.
In the Premier League it might get a bit more vituperative, certainly when West Ham come to town. Their rivalry with Millwall is as hostile as it gets in the English game, one dating back to the days of dock workers competing for business as well as results. At its worst, as in the 2009 riots where 20 people were injured, matters on the pitch feel like an irrelevance. Those who have played in that grudge match, however, do not end up with that impression.
“I remember lots of police, a raw, electric atmosphere, a deep and passionate rivalry, one of the greatest in English football,” says Reo-Coker, whose West Ham side lost 1-0 at The Den in 2004. “It’s a pride game, a hatred game even. Both clubs would probably say they don’t care how the rest of the season goes as long as they win that one game. The pressure was always on the players to perform, the players knew it.
“Of course it’s heavily policed and segregated because it’s a raw hatred.
The noise was non-stop, constant singing. It was like grassroots football at a professional level, raw passion. Every tackle mattered, every throw in. It was emotional, an electric energy for 90 minutes where you didn’t want to end up on the losing side.”
The Met Police might not have such fond memories of the derby, nor would they relish another season that pits Millwall against Leeds, a game rife with enmity from the days of dueling hooligan firms from the 1980s. The last meeting between Chelsea and Millwall in 1995 required the intervention of mounted police. Crystal Palace’s next visit after the Mateta incident would also be contentious.
The Lions in the top flight then, not without its complications, and for the time being still a rather unlikely conclusion to the 2024-25 season. Were it to come to pass, however, you can rest assured that the Premier League would not have seen anything like Millwall.
