No Trophy
Millwall 1 Burnley 0, FA Cup Fifth Round
By our FA Cup correspondent
Third round, fourth round... clearly I was our lucky FA Cup correspondent and no-one else could therefore be trusted to do the match report. Alas, the dream died in the far from romantic surroundings of the New Den, in a sometimes frantic, always ugly game. We lost. We went out. We deserved to.
The first half was dire. Two clueless teams failed to find any penetration. It was a match with plenty of niggle, too. How could any game in which Dennis Wise - surely the most inappropriately named footballer of all time - is the player manager be otherwise? Was I the only one uncomfortable at the way Stan was bigging up his old mate Wisey before the match? What, then, did Stan make of the way Wise and Millwall went about things? If we'd played a Warnock team and they'd acted like this, someone would have to be thinking about a new chapter of Stan the Man.
The Millwall manager started as he meant to go on. He did a bit of kicking, and then concentrated on going to ground whenever one of ours went near him. It was a surprisingly effective tactic. Say what you like about Wise, he's good at falling. His actual footballing contribution was minimal, but for play-acting and gobbing off he couldn't be beaten. The rest of the side followed his example to the letter. Ifill spent more of the match prostrate, straining his neck to look at the ref, than he did on this feet. It was all too much for the referee, who did what often happens in such cases, and handed responsibility for running the game to Wise. Referees can't really cope with player managers. They treat them with deference. Think about Hessenthaler this season, or the all-time classic of Bryan Robson running around kicking people while in charge of Middlesbrough.
More sickening than all this was the consistent booing that people in the Millwall stand to the left of the away end dished out to Camara. There were definitely monkey noises in there. I'm not one to castigate Millwall - I lived in those parts for a while, and I've acknowledged the good work done by many Millwall supporters and their club to clean their image - but this was disgraceful. Do they never wonder why their image is so bad?
On the pitch, Ian Moore fluffed our best chance when through with only the keeper to beat. Watching him, never for a moment was it possible to think he might score. I guess he never believed it. For them, Dichio missed a sitter of a header.
We struggled to compete, and were relieved to go in level. Grant was on a knife edge, having been booked and then spoken to. It always looked like a game with a sending-off in it. Blake, in his pretentious white boots, disappointed. More than this, we didn't have the ability to vary the pattern. We might have profited from going more direct, or by using the width, but given the squad and the subs, changing things around mid-game is hard for us.
That's what Millwall did, and that's how the game was won. After that turgid first half, they changed gear, and we couldn't. They came out faster and more direct. After the first half, in which they kept the game narrow, packing bodies into a small midfield area, they sussed out our weakness at fullback and exploited it by playing wider. They also won just about every ball in the air. Thus was the goal scored. It was a good cross from the hateful Muscat, met powerfully and headed home by the inevitable Dichio, but I don't go along with the wisdom that this was a good goal that couldn't be helped. Where was the challenge from Camara, and where was the marking from May? We had two chances there to stop it.
Not that Millwall didn't deserve it. We can point to half-chances, but they had far more of those. Were we really trying to win it, or was it our strategy to get a draw? Well, when Robbie Blake was subbed after 60-odd minutes, what did you think? True, he hadn't had a good game, but if it's 0-0 and you're trying to win, do you trade your top goalscorer for a hit-and-miss midfielder? You can't do anything but think that only one team was going for the win.
Stan must have regretted it about ten minutes later, when we were a goal behind and down to ten men. Weller was sent off for a predictable altercation with - guess who? - Wise. Weller had been fouled, didn't get the free kick, and reacted by pushing Wise, who went down as though poleaxed. Brilliant leading by example there. The red card was instant. Silly, of course, from Weller, and if you react you run the risk of being dismissed, but I couldn't find it in my heart to blame him overmuch. Except that if he was going to get sent off anyway, he should have hit Wise much harder.
After that, we had no choice but to push up and hope for the best. But Little dithered when he got the ball, and Chadwick (out of form for as long as anyone can remember) and the feckless Alan Moore were hardly likely to be saviours. They came on for Roche and McGregor, and with May pushed up front we played with only Camara at the back. This left us more than a little exposed, and gave Millwall many chances to come at us. They had the ball in our box plenty. Really, we were fortunate to get away with 1-0, and we needed Jensen to pull off some good saves.
We had one golden chance to snatch an undeserved draw. As the clock ticked over into stoppage time, Little played our first good cross into the box. Ian Moore flicked it on; and there, unmarked, was the last Burnley player you would ever hope such a chance would fall to. Alan Moore froze as the ball flashed between him and a gapingly empty goal. He just needed to touch it. He could have thrown himself at it and put both ball and himself into the net. But he stood stuck to the spot and the chance passed. I reckon that's his last chance of redemption gone.
And that, barring a desperate free kick where Jensen came up and got nowhere near it, was that. We were out - without much of a Cup run, and without getting hold of the big money we so desperately need. In some ways it wouldn't be so bad if you could divorce the match from the money. You could try to think of it as just one game we lost, but the thought of the riches there to be won makes it all the more depressing. It wasn't in the same league as our surrender at Watford the season before, but once again we'd let ourselves down under pressure; we hadn't performed, we'd looked too keen to pin our hopes on the draw - and we'd gone out of the Cup against a not particularly good side.
All there was left to do now was leave and go to the pub. Not easy, as it happens. At the end of the game, away supporters wanting to take the train were ‘invited’ to remain in their seats for a few minutes. It turned out to be the sort of invitation where an RSVP was not required. Once outside the away end, we were corralled in an area with a heavy, and heavily sarcastic, police presence for the best part of half an hour. The police round these parts always manage to do something to surprise us. Last season, there'd been a minimal presence as we walked up to South Bermondsey station alongside home supporters. Now, we had massed ranks of coppers to march us up the special passageway and onto segregated trains to, as they told us, "protect us from the Millwall supporters". So we waited, and passed the time talking to policemen who breezily responded to people's enquiries as to whether they would be released to catch the six o'clock from Euston with the words "it don't worry me, I'm not going home that way"; who were contemptuous of the ‘tinpot police force’ we apparently get in Lancashire (such a lack of respect for fellow professionals is disappointing); and who were very upset if you mentioned the word ‘overtime’. Oh, and who threatened to arrest my brother if he swore again - after he hadn't sworn. Such are the joys of being protected for our own safety. To think we have the pleasure of going back again!
I can hardly wait. But next time we come to Millwall we will have to play better than this. We will have to play to win. All that is in front of us now is a long, hard slog to stay in this Division, and we have to improve on this.
Burnley: Jensen, Roche (Chadwick, 77), McGregor (Alan Moore, 85), May, Camara, Little, Grant, Chaplow, Wood, Blake (Weller, 62 (sent off, 73)), Ian Moore.
Subs not used: Rachubka, Orr.
Scorer: (Millwall) Dichio 70.
Referee: H Webb (Rotherham).
Attendance: 10,420.
Firmo's Man of the Match: Tony Grant.
As with all articles on the site, the views expressed in the match reports section are those of the individual contributor, and do not necessarily reflect the view of the Burnley FC London Supporters' Club.
