To a casual observer, not much has changed at Millwall since Joe Edwards was named head coach at the start of November.
After 13 games under Edwards, the Lions are three places better off in the Championship — up to 15th — but still exactly the same distance from the play-off spots.
Take a closer look at their football, though, and there is a quiet transformation taking place in south London.
Millwall are proud to be a blood-and-thunder club — physical, committed and nasty — and their out-of-possession approach under Edwards’s predecessor, Gary Rowett, who was sacked in October after four years in charge, was effective but often achingly dull.
Edwards, a former Chelsea coach, now has the Lions dominating the ball, passing out from the back and playing fast-paced attacking football.
“A lot of people tried to warn me, ‘Be careful of what the Millwall fans want! They want [to play] direct, and rough and ready’,” Edwards tells Standard Sport. “Almost like the fans turn up to The Den every week and just expect us to launch it into the box.
"I don’t think that’s the case. I’ve had some interaction with fans and then [there is] what I feel out there [on the touchline].
“If you look at our last two games, I think we had 20 shots to 12 in the Leicester game and in 30, 35 minutes of the Boro game, it was quite relentless, just waves of attack from us. When you’ve got that kind of speed and intensity, it’s welcomed.”
Not that Edwards is prepared to sacrifice Millwall’s hard edge.
“When there’s a chance to put their foot in, they’re still doing that and I would never ever settle for anything less,” he adds. “The successful Chelsea teams I’ve been a part of, they had quality, skill, goals but they were they were physical. They would run all over teams.
“If it was a highly-technical game, they’d play at a high-end technical level. But if you wanted to kick us, we’d kick you harder. That’s the kind of balance I want to bring to Millwall because I know that’s the standard expected.”
Reprogramming a group of players who, in many cases, played under Rowett for years, is not a simple process, and a 4-0 thrashing of Sheffield Wednesday in Edwards’s opening game was followed by seven without a win.
The Boxing Day victory over Saturday's opponents QPR was a turning point, followed up with 1-0 wins over Norwich and Bristol City. They have since lost against Leicester in the FA Cup and Middlesbrough, although both performances were encouraging.
“Two new coaches [including assistant Andy Myers] can’t come in and overnight click their fingers and get a team composed and calm on the ball, while trying to make sure we keep in touch with a lot of the strengths of the current group, the values the club has always had,” says Edwards.
"We’re making progress but I definitely wouldn’t say I’m anywhere near a point where I’m sitting there thinking it's job done"
“We’re making progress but I definitely wouldn’t say I’m anywhere near a point where I’m sitting there thinking, ‘Okay, that’s it, job done’. But certainly now, we’re a team that when you watch us, watch what our players instinctively do when we get possession of the ball, I do think we look different to four, five, six weeks ago.”
Edwards spent the best part of three decades at Chelsea, as a youth player and then coach, working in the club’s academy before assisting Frank Lampard and Thomas Tuchel. The loathing between Chelsea and Millwall is mutual and bitter, even if the clubs has not been in the same orbit for years.
“I am very heavily Chelsea connected, so I wasn’t sure [about my reception here] if I’m honest,” Edwards says.
“But I’ve not had any sort of mention of Chelsea in any negative way since I’ve been here, which has been good.”
Edwards was a youth coach during a golden era for Chelsea’s academy, as England internationals Reece James, Conor Gallagher, Mason Mount, Declan Rice, Marc Guehi, Fikayo Tomori, Tammy Abraham and others were coming through Cobham.
Today, only James and Gallagher remain at Stamford Bridge, and the new owners’ model relies on selling academy graduates to balance the books.
“Particularly in Frank’s first spell, when Fikayo, Mason, Tammy, Reece were playing regularly, I did think, ‘Well, that’s it then...a lot of them will just be the core of that team for years to come’,” says Edwards.
“Some of them feel like younger brothers to me, we kind of grew up together.
“So sometimes it’s sad, when I would love them to still be at Chelsea because that would have been the dream for everyone, but to see the stage that they’re on and how well some of them are doing makes me incredibly proud.”
Asked if Chelsea’s model is unhealthy, Edwards looks for the positives.
“It’s a huge plus when Chelsea can [transfer] list Mount, Abraham, Guehi and it’s getting beyond £100million,” he says. “It’s credit to the way the club is working at academy level. If that’s the chosen model, if people want to use those finances to recruit what they deem as the best from elsewhere, I guess that’s each club’s prerogative.”
Edwards will not “dampen the spirits” of Millwall supporters by ruling out a play-off push this season but suggests next year is more realistic.
“With a couple of transfer windows under my belt and a pre-season with the group, I’d be going into next season optimistic of achieving something in the top half of the league,” he says.
