Long Shot can be, but with two games plus the game to take, Millwall’s ascent of the championship is still a live perspective. A club like a few or others in the English game, with a fans base that loves only the displeasure that its club begets in others, in the highest category? At least, it would be the Premier League 2025-26 like any other.
It is still unlikely to get to that, but the perspective is completely more live at the end of Easter Monday than at first. The headlines of the last two playoffs, Coventry City and Bristol City, were demolished by multicine opponents with descent. Middlesbrough, outside looking, ended with nothing to show from his trip to Sheffield Wednesday. Meanwhile, Alex Neil’s team maintained the end of the deal, responding to a defeat in Blackburn on Friday with a resounding 3-1 victory in Norwich.
They will still need more breaks to continue their way. With two games for the end, three points of the sixth feel with a lower goals difference. They will need at least one of Coventry or Bristol City to lower points in both games. If Middlesbrough win, they would probably need fifth and sixth to collapse. All that while beating Swansea and Burnley in their remaining games.
Awesome Victoria over Norwich
In Monday’s evidence, the latter is not beyond the scope of possibility. Millwall has now won five of its last seven in a stage of the season where the impulse seems to be the most valuable product in the championship. His performance against Norwich could not avoid inspiring the question of what could happen if both make the play and win in Wembley.
“The way they approach the game is like basic football for professional game,” says CBS Sports analyst Nigel Reo-Coker, a man who knows very well how difficult a Millwall task is. “They would bring an electric atmosphere, helpless energy, as their song says, nobody likes them, they don’t care. It is the club on the wrong side of the tracks and they are proud of it.
“They love to be an helpless, love that faces adversity and be against the world. The atmosphere for the Premier League in each game would be completely electric, you could not put it in words, you would have to be in the stadium.”
In pure soccer terms, Millwall would be an intriguing counterweight for so many others in the League. If football philosophies often take into account one to invest their full back, the central backs that play the ball and a coveted possession above almost anything else, Millwall is a reminder that identity can be more than quite coordinated and well coordinated movements.
Maybe they could play Boot Ball, but it wouldn’t be very million. In the field they reflect who the club has been. Hooliganism cartoons have become exactly that, but the lions are proud of their anachronism, when they go against the grain and liquidate the other team.
When everything is in harmony, Den Rage.
Norwich averaged the second more possession in the championship in this game. Millwall’s response was simple. If you want the ball, keep? We will not need it for a long time. Hit the big men up, take the ball to the flanks and win your duels. When it works as well as it did today, Millwall’s football is exciting to see and a nightmare to play.
A high pre -presation line forced an error to the yellow team within only eight minutes, the type of clumsy rotation around the corner of anyone in particular that you could not imagine is in the Millwall training manual. A cross that another rained in Norwich’s goal, Femi Azeez is hitting what seemed to be an unsuspecting Mihailo Ivanovic. The den did not care, encouraging his “great Serbian” to the beams. They know what they like in these parts. It would not be the last time they showed their worship of the 20 years of Novi Sad.
Despite Norwich’s possession, they could barely find a path through the Millwall line, without registering a shot until the American Josh Sargent snuggled with half an hour to play. A Shane Duffy heading of a dead ball gave them hope just before the break, but they were never about to win a piece of piece with Millwall. Ultimately, it would be the last shot that the strangulated canaries took. The excellent Azeez had thrown home a corner in the first half, 6 feet 2 inches Ivanovic would get a second for him and third for Millwall in the second.
As the news leaked in the results in other places, the anticipation of the DEN was palpable. Two more victories and who knows, perhaps a third season in the highest category after that brief flirting between 1988 and 1990.
What would they contribute to the Premier League?
Given the reputation of Millwall’s travelers who could give some on the insomnia nights of the Premier League, it should be taken into account that the club has worked tirelessly to distance themselves from the worst of its fans base, to reach the communities in southern London that would never dream of entering the den in the 70s or 80s Inclusion in Southwark. The club has adapted as its Bermondsey neighborhood; The route to the den can be premonitory, but once it is outside, it is the same rich tapestry of artisanal beers, hamburger bars and tasteless oasis in the speakers.
Even so, the edges have not completely softened. Like Jean-Phillipe Mateta, not only the victim of a kick in the head of goalkeeper Liam Roberts, but also the issue of singing ruthless in its consequences, can attest, there may be a cruel sense of humor for Millwall’s repertoire. On Monday, each Norwich launch was received with a wave of teasing, an out of place pass by drawing almost both delight and its own goal. Few lands are Schadenfreude like this.
In the Premier League it could become a little more vituperative, certainly when West Ham arrived in the city. Its rivalry with Millwall is as hostile as it is in the English game, one that goes back to the days of the dock workers that compete for businesses and results. In the worst case, as in the 2009 disturbances where 20 people were injured, matters in the field feel like an irrelevance. Those who have played in that resentment match, however, do not end with that impression.
“I remember a lot of police, a raw and electrical atmosphere, a deep and passionate rivalry, one of the best in English football,” says Reo-Coker, whose West Ham Side lost 1-0 in the DEN in 2004. “” It is a game of pride, an even hatred game. Both clubs probably say they don’t care how the rest of the season goes so long that they won that game.
“Of course, it is very guarded and segregated because it is a raw hatred.
The noise was constant and constant song. It was like a professional base football, raw passion. Each Tackle mattered, each launch. It was emotional, an electrical energy for 90 minutes where you did not want to finish on the loser side. “
The MET Police could not have such good memories of the Derby, nor would they enjoy another season that faces Millwall against Leeds, a game full of enmity of the days of Dueligan’s companies in the 1980s. The last meeting between Chelsea and Millwall in 1995 required the intervention of the mounted police. Crystal Palace’s next visit after Mateta’s incident would also be controversial.
Lions in the highest category then, not without their complications, and for the moment it remains a fairly unlikely conclusion for the 2024-25 season. If it were going to happen, however, it may be sure that the Premier League would not have seen anything like Millwall.
