'IT WASN'T THE TIME FOR JOE BUT HE'S GOT GREAT FUTURE'

IT WOULD be easy, at this point, to stick the boot into Joe Edwards, the blink-and-you’llmiss-him Millwall man ager who spent so much of his 19-game tenure denying that the Lions were in a relegation battle that he was sacked before he actually got the chance to contest one.

- Chris Dunlavy

 

Appointed in November, Edwards’ arrival was supposed to signal a progressive stylistic shift from the safety-first football that had garnered successive top-half finishes under predecessor Gary Rowett.

Eleven defeats later, Millwall were staring at life in League One, any aesthetic ideals abandoned as they dispensed with Edwards and summoned Neil Harris - an old-school Millwall man to his core - to save the day.

Out went the patient passing football. Back came the energy, aggression and naked hostility that was the hallmark of so many great Millwall sides.

Two months on, a slender one-point gap to the relegation zone had become a plump seven-point cushion pre-weekend, three consecutive victories securing an eighth straight season in the Championship.

Yet if Millwall midfielder George Saville is fulsome in his praise of the revival engineered by Harris, he is also sympathetic towards Edwards, whom he feels was the right man, at the wrong club, at the worst possible time.

“He didn’t lose the dressing room at all,” insists the 30-year-old. “I liked him. A lot of the lads liked him. Some of the ideas he put across were really good, and I can honestly say that he’s a terrific coach with a great future ahead of him.

“It was just bad timing. He’s 37. He’d come from youth football with Chelsea and England and this was first job as a head coach.

“It’s only my opinion, but I think someone like that - a young manager still learning their trade, or somebody whowants to change the playing style - needs a full pre-season to get their points across.