The Four-Year Plan
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In preparation for the new season, we have finalised our four-year plan beginning from the 2025/26 campaign.
We will be discussing a variety of topics regarding Millwall’s approach over the next four years until the end of my current deal which ends in 2029. It is a simple outline that is where I want the club to be by that point and in the years between.
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The first of those points is the community aspect of the club, which I certainly value as one of, if not the, top priority. I have spent 18 years of my career at this club and it has been the most wonderful time of my life, with the community surrounding the club providing me with some of the most joyous moments.
Because of that, I would like Millwall to remain a thriving and self-sustaining club both now and in the future and encourage the same positive environment that I entered and grew up around when I was a young player.
Over the past few seasons, we have shown that we are capable of reaching heights we never thought were achievable before, so we must push on with that belief that absolutely nothing is impossible.
To help keep our focus on the community in Bermondsey, we will be hiring new community liaisons to keep a close link between the people and their club.
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I think our performances in all competitions have shifted the landscape of expectations for the next few years.
This season we will be aiming for a Europa League spot at the absolute minimum following our 4th place finish last season. In 2026/27, that shifts to a Champions League space before going for the title in the final two years of my current deal.
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The recent re-introduction to European football at Millwall after 20 years has influenced us to come up with a European plan which fits our minimum expectations for the next few years.
This season, we can only expect the minimum which is to be competitive in the Champions League, but I want this to progress stage-by-stage over the years until we reach a Champions League Final by 2029.
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Moving onto the facilities, we have really pushed on with our development of every patch of land that we own at Millwall, with the training and youth facilities experiencing vast improvements.
I think our training ground at Calmont Road should be a world-leader by 2029 with the pace that redevelopment has taken place over the past four years or so. On the youth side, I think we can consider ourselves to be a world-leader in most aspects of that area and now we must wait to see how much that affects us in the next few years.
The only area of concern that I see is at The Den which was of course brought in to comply with regulations of the time, moving out of the Old Den in 1993 as it wasn’t suited as an all-seater venue. We have been working with different local companies to draw up redevelopments of The Den or potentially looking at a new arena to show our football in.
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The coaching standard at the club has risen year-on-year and I think that we have reached a point where we can now begin to offer more opportunities to local coaches in the youth team, with a set-out development plan to progress into the first-team coaching affairs over time.
With this plan, we are aiming to have every single coach licensed at UEFA Pro level by 2028.
Another staffing goal that we have is to become one of the world leaders in performance data analysis, which we will be expanding every year from now after a recent boost in this area.
Regarding development coaching, Steve Creighton will manage the Under 18s side on their path to Neil Harris’ Under 23s team, eventually paving a way to the first-team where they will join me.
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The club’s recent attention to developing the youth facilities and signing young players for the Under 18s is a testament to how much I value the idea at Millwall.
We want to now be encouraging youth recruitment to span globally on our side and we have recently created links abroad with Hradec Králové in Czechia and Omonia Nicosia in Cyprus to help expand our youth potential coming into the club.
Despite this, we will be prioritising youth recruitment locally in the Bermondsey area before expanding our search bit-by-bit, so it eventually reaches a global search.
This will certainly apply in years of low-standard in our own youth system where we will set a budget every year for Under 18 signings to come in from lower tier clubs in the British Isles before looking for cheaper alternatives at lower-ranked foreign clubs, making Millwall a prized destination for youth development.
In doing this recruitment at home and abroad, we look to have an Under 23s and Under 18s side that will be able to win titles of their own level due to having an abundance of young talent in those teams.
The reason I see so much benefit in taking this approach is because we are on the lower end of the financial scale in domestic and European terms, but we have high aspirations as detailed before. A strong youth setup not only sets us up for an excellent future squad, but also more financial prospects.
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The more analytically-minded Millwall fans might have noticed a difference in how we have been playing since January this year and they would be right as I have altered our tactics that we have had in place since the Championship promotion.
I have decided to move away from the low-scoring and at times, low entertainment style of play and I wish to focus on tactics that are much more attacking-minded over the coming years.
We will remain adaptable depending on certain opponents, but it is a general shift in direction that I want the first-team to move towards, particularly with new faces coming in and a lot of our Championship generation moving away from the club.
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To keep intact with our traditions, we will keep our focus on aggressive, brave and loyal British players with a minimum of 15 homegrown players registered at one time in our league efforts.
This will also apply to young foreign players who we wish to naturalise into the United Kingdom and moreso the Millwall way of doing things, making them count towards our homegrown players within 4 years of their arrival.
By the end of my current contract, I would like three-quarters of the first-team to be homegrown in the nation or even better, at the club.
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As much as a traditional club like Millwall wishes not to acknowledge it, the commercial side of the game does have to play its part in the club - particularly with our recent ventures into the top-tier of English football and Europe.
With our appearances in Europe, the board would like to increase sponsorship from our current level of £28.5M to over £50M by June 2029.
To compromise with the effect that might have on the loyal fans who were here long before the sponsors, I have proposed and agreed that we keep the corporate and the matchgoing fans as separated as possible.
For instance, we will open up new avenues of sponsoring the club to companies who wish to do so, but we will not be handing over stadium naming rights or things that generally interfere with the club’s culture, history or traditions.
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Finally, the club’s finances will remain steady whilst we compete in the Premier League and over the next few years, we will look to increase our profits from last season’s £30M or so to over £90M per season by 2029 and beyond.
To ensure this is not held close to the ownership’s chest, we have agreed that I will spend over 90% of the club’s transfer budget every season to make sure that in the process of increasing profit, the playing squad will not suffer as a result as we intend to meet our targets domestically and continentally.
To get the best out of our money, I will liaise with our Director of Football James Whyley on all incomings and outgoings at the club to broadcast our relative views on player values.
After seeing the detrimental effect high wages can have on squad dynamics at the high levels of the game, I have implemented a salary cap at the club, which increases year-on-year.
This season it stands at £135,000 per week, and that will rise every year up to the £250,000 per week maximum by 2029.
If players wish to go higher, they will be obstructed by the club, negotiated down or simply sold if the situation develops out of control.
Is that the legendary Péter Gulácsi in goal for Barca!? A brilliant way to start the season, and it certainly suggests that you have a squad that's capable of bringing the Premier League trophy to The Den trophy cabinet.
