What if Millwall get promoted? Controversial club would bring an edge to Premier League, welcomed or not

It can be a long shot, but with two games plus the play -offs to go, Millwall’s Ascension from the Championship remains a live prospect. A club like a couple like others in the English game, with a fan base that keeps nothing more than the aversion that engages their club in the top flight in the top flight? If there is nothing else, it would make the 2025-26 Premier League unlike another.

It is still unlikely that it will come, but the prospect is more live at the end of Easter Monday than in the beginning. The established operators of the last two play-off spots, Coventry City and Bristol City, were both felled by relegation-threatened opponents. Middlesbrough, on the outside, looked inside, ended up with nothing of their journey to Sheffield on Wednesday. In the meantime, Alex Neil held in more than their end of the bargain, responded to a bruising defeat in Blackburn on Friday with a thunderous 3-1 victory in Norwich.

They still need more breaks to go their way. With two games to go, they sit three points out of the sixth with an inferior target difference. They need at least one of Coventry or Bristol City to drop points in both games. If Middlesbrough wins, they would probably need the fifth and sixth to collapse. All that while they beat Swansea and Burnley in their remaining competitions.

Impressive victory over Norwich

On the proof of Monday, the latter does not go beyond the rich of the possibility. Millwall has now won five of their last seven in a phase of the season in which Momentum seems to be the most valuable raw material of the championship. Their performance against Norwich couldn’t help it, but inspire themselves to wonder what could happen if they both make the play -offs and win at Wembley.

“The way they approach the game is as a basic football for the professional game,” says CBS sports analyst Nigel REO-Coker, a man who knows all too well how difficult an away game is. “They would bring an electric atmosphere, an underdog energy, as their song goes, nobody likes them, they don’t care. It is the club that comes from the wrong side of the tracks and they are proud of it.

“They like to be an underdog, keeping adversity and being against the world. The atmosphere for the Premier League in every game should be completely electric, you couldn’t put it into words, you should be in the stadium.”

In pure football terms, Millwall would provide an intriguing counterbalance for so many others in the competition. If football philosophies often put one in mind for full backs, ball-play center-backs and a desire of possession over almost everything to be cabin, Millwall is a reminder that can be identity about more than beautiful passing and neatly coordinated movements.

Maybe they could play Ball, but it wouldn’t be very Millwall. On the field they reflect who the club has been off. The caricatures of hooliganism have become exactly that, but the lions are proud of their anachronism, by going against the grain and swinging the other team.

When it’s all in harmony, the pit roars.

Norwich on average took the second most possession in the championship in this game. Millwall’s reaction was simple. If you want the ball, keep it? We don’t need it long. Take the big men at the top, bring the ball to the flanks and win duels. If it works as well as today, Millwall’s football is a sensation to watch and a nightmare to play against.

A striking front line forced an error from the team in Geel within eight minutes, the kind of clumsy flick around the corner around the corner in particular that you could not imagine is in the Millwall training manual. One crosses rained on the goal of Norwich, Femi Azeez touched what an unsuspecting Mihailo Ivanovic seemed to be. It didn’t matter and welcomed their “big f — ing servant” to the trusses. They know what they like about these parts. It would not be the last opportunity that they showed their worship of the 20 -year -old from Novi Sad.

For all the possession of Norwich they could hardly find a way through the Millwall line, so they did not register a shot until the American Josh Sargent curled for half an hour to play. A Shane Duffy header from a dead ball gave them hope just before the break, but they were never about to win a set piece match with Millwall. Ultimately, it would be the last shot that took the horrible canaries. The excellent Azeez had flown home in the first half in the first half, 6ft 2 in Ivanovic would get a second for itself and third for Millwall in the second.

While news was filtered elsewhere in the results, the expectation of the Den was noticeable. Two more victories and who knows, maybe a third season in the top flight after that short flirt between 1988 and 1990.

What would they bring to the Premier League?

Given the reputation of the traveling fans of Millwall who may give something in the Premier League sleepless nights, it should be noted that the club has worked tirelessly to distance themselves from the worst of its fan base, to reach the communities in South Londs that would never dream of coming in the 1970s or 80s. The confidence of the community has been awarded and tirelessly works to promote admission to Southwark. The club has adapted as the neighborhood of Bermondsey has; The route to Het Hol is perhaps ominous, but once you are outside, it is the same rich carpet of traditional beers, hamburger bars and tasteless oasis on the speakers.

Yet the edges are not completely flattened. If Jean-Phillipe Mateta, not only the victim of a kick against the head by goalkeeper Liam Roberts, but also the subject of merciless singing in his aftermath, can confirm, there may be a cruel sense of humor for the Millwall repertoire. On Monday, each struck in Norwich was greeted with an increase in Jeers, a misplaced pass that pulled almost as much joy as its own goal. Little soil damage as this like this.

In the Premier League it might be a bit more vitrically, especially when West Ham comes to the city. Their rivalry with Millwall is as hostile as it gets in the English game, one that dates from the days of dock employees who compete for companies and results. In the worst case, just like in the riots of 2009 where 20 people were injured, things on the field feel like an irrelevance. However, those who played in that resorting competition do not end with that impression.

“I remember a lot of police, a raw, electric atmosphere, a deep and passionate rivalry, one of the biggest football in English,” says Reo-Coker, whose West Ham side lost 1-0 in the pine in 2004. “It is a proud game, a hatred, a hatred, a hatred, a hatred, a hatred, the players knew it too.

“Of course it is heavily controlled and separated because it is a raw hatred.

The sound was non-stop, constantly singing. It was like Grassroots football at a professional level, raw passion. Every tackle mattered, every throw. It was emotional, an electrical energy for 90 minutes where you did not want to end up on the losing side. “

The Police Van Mo may not have such good memories of the Derby, nor would they enjoy another season that Millwall against Leeds Pits, a match full of enmity from the days of Duelling Hooligan companies from the 1980s. The last meeting between Chelsea and Millwall in 1995 required the intervention of the raised police. The next visit by Crystal Palace after the Mateta incident would also be controversial.

The lions in the top flight then, not without its complications, and for the time being still a rather unlikely conclusion for the 2024-25 season. However, if it were to pass, you can be sure that the Premier League would have seen nothing as Millwall.