Millwall and mindlessness

However, Wednesday’s trip to Coventry showed that there should be no lifting off the accelerator in the league, even if we weren’t as incisive in terms of goals. (At least we’re scoring goals though, unlike Burnley who are so intent on keeping their back door closed that they’ve forgotten how to unlock the front one, and so are stuck in a remarkably quiet place, unsure of what to do next).

And so, we move on to Saturday and Millwall at home in the FA Cup. It seems remarkable somehow that we’ve never met Millwall in the FA Cup before – especially when you consider that the competition began more than 150 years ago, in 1872 (and, yes, I remember the Centenary Cup Final very well indeed!).

It isn’t as if either club is new (i.e. less than 100 years old) either. Millwall Rovers were formed in 1885, the current incarnation retaining the name even though they haven’t played in that part of London’s Isle of Dogs since 1910.

We’ve never met Millwall in the League Cup either – and that competition is in its 65^th season now, although I still somehow think of it as a ‘new’ development. Maybe it’s my age, as the League Cup began in the year I was born. I’m sure that statisticians can prove that the probability of one team meeting any other is actually not that high, but then, equally, the clusters of results that seem to come up against certain of the same teams must be even more unlikely.

Either way we’ve only faced Millwall in cup competitions on two occasions. Both were in the Full Members Cup – an additional tournament introduced in 1985 and running until 1992 - for clubs in the top two English divisions after the Heysel disaster, after which English clubs were banned from playing in Europe. Obviously, it was another money-making exercise which was hijacked by corporate sponsors. It was known as the Simod Cup by the time we played Millwall in it at the Old Den on 8 December 1987. We lost 2.0 but, honestly, after Billy Bremner had taken Leeds to within minutes of both promotion and Wembley in the spring of that year, did anyone really care? Just 5,034 turned up for the match…

Almost a year later, on 29 November 1988 even fewer – 4,242 – braved the elements to see Leeds lose in the same cup, at the same venue, and by the same score of 2.0. They beat us at The Den again this season of course – we’ve lost nine of the last 12 away games against them in the league – but at least this tie is at Elland Road. I’m not entirely sure why a ‘rivalry’ has built up between us; after all, they are just a small, underperforming club from south-east London… The worst memory for me dates back to 2009 when, having lost the first leg of the League One Play-Off semi-final at The Den, 1.0 (obviously), to a late goal from Neil Harris, the second leg took place on 14 May 2009 at Elland Road. The crowd of 37,036 was the highest attendance outside of the Premier League that season.

After Jermaine Beckford had missed a penalty for Leeds, Luciano Becchio put us in front after 53 minutes – making the score in the tie all-square – but Jimmy Abdou equalized for Millwall 19 minutes later. Leeds could not find a way through the packed Millwall defence again and the match finished 1.1 leaving Leeds in League One for a third, consecutive season.

Ah! The play-offs…

When considering Millwall – and, thankfully, we don’t need to very often – we might often use the word ‘mindless.’ Although Daniel Farke wants to ‘keep the momentum up’ of our team, I hope he rotates the players more than usual, as this cup game is really not in our mind’s eyes, any more than Millwall deserve to be. It might be the FA Cup rather than some Mickey Mouse trophy (Chelsea won the Full Members Cup twice; what more can I say?) but a temporary derailment on Saturday would be far better than us failing again to reach the mainline station at all.