Gary Rowett believed that ‘neither team did enough to win the game’ in Millwall’s opening day draw home to Stoke City.

Rowett said that he was ‘disappointed’ with his side, especially in the first half.

He said, ‘When we had the opportunity to pass the ball, we didn’t do it with anywhere near enough quality.

‘When we had the chance to compete and win second balls, we didn’t do that with enough drive and desire. It was a disappointing first half.’

‘When it’s a game like that, you’ve got to settle it down and play the game you want to play, not the opposition and we struggled to do that and that is a testament to Stoke’s resilience and physical strength.’

Despite slight improvement in the second half, Millwall never really looked in charge of the game.

Rowett continued, ‘In a game like that, if you want to turn it your way, you have to play with more composure and settle the game down. When we did, we were a little bit better, without doing enough.

‘It’s a disappointing first game, but having said that, we won the cup game, clean sheet second game. We take the point and we move on, and accept we didn’t play well enough.’

The Millwall boss predicted that Michael O’Neil’s side will cause plenty of teams issues on the road this year, as the former Northern Ireland boss begins to put his mark on the Potters.

‘They’re a very, very physical team the way they’re set up this year. Similar formation to ourselves, played very directly to the front, to two big, strong strikers and I just think it made the game really hard.’

‘Stoke are going to do that to a lot of sides this year. They are going to make it difficult. I think they’ll go away from home and beat a lot of sides this year, they’ll out battle a lot of sides. They’ve got quality in the ranks.

‘They had some really good results at the end of the season, they got some quality players and I felt the game really was a stalemate that neither team did enough to win.’