Millwall still face fight to avoid relegation

By Simon Hayes on April 9, 2008 8:01 PM |

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By Ian Toal

It’s pretty much as you were a week ago, after the spoils were shared between Millwall and Gillingham last Saturday.

The atmosphere at The Den was one of the best this season as both sets of supporters realised just how close both teams are to relegation and possible administration.

The Lions fans really got behind the team early doors and when we did equalise in the second half for a deserved point the celebrations nearly took the roof off!

If we had lost that game we would have struggled to recover from that setback with tough fixtures remaining.

That threat of administration has thankfully been alleviated for another six months after chairman John Berylson lent the club £3million in a loan from one of his companies. We have got a massive problem at our club in that our costs outstrip our revenue by a good £3-6m a year and have done for years.

It’s difficult to see how the club can turn this round to break even with just its football operations, so it is plain to see that we need the regeneration scheme to take off to make the club enough money to cover these losses for a few years.

To be honest, most of our supporters don’t really care about the regeneration scheme as long as it doesn’t adversely affect our football club and importantly our ground. But they will definitely be happy to see our losses covered and will hope this would help the club recover to past strengths.

In the meantime all the players, staff, directors and supporters need to do everything in their power to keep the club in this division over the remaining four games.

The team is still decimated with injuries and added to this a couple of players are not playing to their best, Ahmet Brkovic being the main culprit, missing three game-changing sitters in the last three matches.

Despite these misses and the crowd starting to get on his back, Brkovic will almost certainly have a key role to play in those final four games. He is a player who invariably gets into a scoring position in every game so hopefully he will get more chances, but will take them to redeem himself in the eyes of the supporters.

Two players showing great commitment lately have been skipper Paul Robinson and defensive partner Andy Frampton.

Robbo has put in some great performances including several vital last-ditch tackles while Frampton is starting to overcome the boo boys to show he can be a good player at this level. Above all, he is now showing the determination that we need all our players to display over the remainder of the season to get the results required.