Football Manager Blog | Football Manager Guru | Millwall Ends Brilliant Season

Hello and welcome, I hope you are all well. This is the final post of the first season with Millwall. In this post, I’ll be telling you about the last 13 games played over 3 months. Up to this point in the season we were still unbeaten, but that may change in the next few games. I will also be telling you about the award given out at the end of the season. Now onto the action.

March

During March, there are 4 games to be played. We also had one televised game, against Charlton, which I will show you the stats of. Below is all the results from the month March.

Walsall (A)- Harris, Frampton

I highly expected to win this game and eventually came out with the 3 points, after a tough game. Harris equalised for the Lions, after Walsall took the lead. Frampton then scored the winner in injury time.

Charlton (H)- McGleish, Harris

In a game that we totally dominated, I expected to win by a slightly bigger margin, but at least we got the 3 points. McGleish got the opening goal to give us a 1-0 lead, but Charlton soon equalised. Neil Harris got the winner with 30 minutes to go. We could have had a lot more goals with the stats that we had.

We had double the shots and 5 more on target!

Leeds (A)- Morison, McGleish

I thought we might have been beaten in this game, but the scoreline turned out to be the same as it was last time, 2-2. Leeds took a 2-0 lead, but my side never gave up and got a goal back through Steve Morison, and equalised through McGleish and a stunning goal.

Stockport (H)- Morison, McGleish

A good 2-0 win for us, and goals from Morison and McGleish made McGleish extend his goal tally, to be 3 in front of Grant Holt of Norwich. We got the 3 points which kept us at the top of the league by a long way.

At the end of this month, I got a mail saying that Millwall had secured a play-off place, which meant we had completed part of the promotion push. We were the first club in England to secure a play-off place, as we kept our unbeaten run up.

April

April saw us playing 6 games, in which we ended our unbeaten run by getting beat twice. We had 2 big games against Colchester and Huddersfield which were the tough ones.

Brentford (H)-Ormerod (2)

This game was one of the easiest games of the month, but we only managed 2 goals. Ormerod, scored once in the 65^th minute and again in the 82^nd minute to secure us the 3 points.

Colchester (A)

This is the first game that ended our unbeaten run as Colchester beat us 1-0 away from home. The fans were still pleased with this result as we were cruising to the title.

Gillingham (H)- Antal o.g, Price(2), McGleish

This was the game that if we won, we were promoted to the championship, and the side didn’t fail to score in this game as we scored 4 goals. The first of the goals was an own goal from the Gillingham goal keeper, followed by 2 good team goals, finished by Price. McGleish got the last goal to secure our place in the Championship next season. All that was left, was to secure the League 1 title.

Yeovil (A)

A goal-less draw against a side I expected to beat by a massive margin. Not one of my players played well which gives me even more reason to have a squad change out in summer.

Huddersfield (A)- Alexander

This was the second defeat of the season, and this performance was just as bad as the Yeovil one. Substitute Alexander scored the goal for Millwall after going to 2-0 after 30 minutes. A poor performance from the whole squad.

We won the league! We won the league despite getting beat and Leeds got beat aswell, which let us lift the League 1 title!

Leyton Orient (H)- Price, Eustace, Emmanuel-Thomas, Alexander

A great win for the side, which gives us a good celebration for the game. We just won the league and then come out to win 4-2. Price got the first of the 4, followed by Eustace who got his first goal for the club. Emmanuel-Thomas scored the 3^rd followed by Alexander who once again came on as a substitute.

May

This month saw us play the final 2 games of the season against Tranmere and Swindon. Also, I will tell you about the end of the season awards.

Tranmere (A)- Emmanuel-Thomas, McGleish(3)

In a 7 goal thriller, Millwall came out on top with a massive win. Emmanuel-Thomas opened the scoring with a great goal, followed by a spectacular McGleish hat-trick. This game was the game that showed England we can score goals and that we will be good enough for the Championship.

Swindon (H)- Emmanuel-Thomas, Harris

What a way to end the season! A 2-1 win over Swindon, is a great way to end the season. Emmanuel-Thomas scored on his last game playing for Millwall to give us the 1-0 lead. Swindon equalised to make it 1-1 and substitution Neil Harris scored the winner.

This is how the league finished. I was astounded with how many points we finished with. We finished with 110 points and 15 ahead of Leeds. We scored 96 goals and conceded 46 leaving us with a goal difference of +50. Colchester won the play-offs.

I was proud of myself after I won this award. My first season as manager and I won the Manager of the year award. Pretty good.

I also got the Manager of the Month award for May after winning both games and scoring 6 goals.

Scott McGleish turned out to be the best player in the squad at the end of the season followed by Steve Morison and Gary Alexander.

This was the team of the season. I was proud to announce that 4 Millwall players were in there including Alan Dunne, Darren Ward, Tony Craig and David Martin.

After a proud season, and a season to remember, expect a lot of changes to be made to the side because we will need to strengthen it a lot to challenge in the championship.

Thanks for reading and please comment.