In his pre-Millwall press conference, Mike Dodds has discussed finding the balance between selecting the best side every week and rotating some fringe players with the long-term in mind.
NO RUSH WITH RETURNING PLAYERS
“Potentially, I think we have to take our time with all of them. Patrick Roberts is another one, Corry Evans has been training with the group for three or four weeks. It would be easy to throw them in. Aji week on week has looked stronger and there probably has been a temptation to play him - for whatever reason I decided against it. Whether it's this weekend or the following weekend I'm pretty sure we'll see Aji in a team.”
EXPERIMENTING VS WINNING
“I don't want to sit on the fence with that question but it's a bit of both. This is a massive football club and what I'm not going to do is use these games to experiment, but at the same time we have to build to get us back to where we want to be. They're not going to be throwaway games but there is one eye on the next 12 to 18 months. It is a balance. As the head coach I want to win every game so that's the priority. From there it's whether we need to change the shape or give Player X an opportunity. Any decision is not a five minute decision, it's hours and hours of watching the opposition, watching our games and things we've done well and haven't done well. Those decisions are made over a long period of time.”
