Millwall boss provides striker injury updates ahead of Den fixture against QPR

Benik Afobe is set to miss Millwall’s home game against QPR tomorrow with a hamstring injury.

The Stoke City loanee came off with the problem in Saturday’s 2-1 win over Cardiff at The Den.

“We’ll know a little bit more about Benik today in terms of his injury,” Lions manager Gary Rowett told the South London Press. “It looks like he has done something to the hamstring. Until we’ve had the scan it is quite difficult to assess and gauge.

“It just seems any chance we get for momentum is made that little bit harder by injuries but it is part of the game. We seem to have a lot of injuries to key forward players and in this division you need as many forward players as you can.

“But that is the case. It is going to be an opportunity for someone else to come in and play.”

Oliver Burke came off after 69 minutes and was on the receiving end of a few crunching challenges from Cardiff’s Alex Smithies – once when he closed the keeper down and twice as he broke through on goal.

“I think Burkey will be fine,” said Rowett. “It was just an accumulation. He got a whack off the keeper in the first half and went down two or three times.

“You are conscious when someone like him is coming back into lots and lots of games, you don’t want to push him through 90 minutes every single game. He is pretty close to being ready for that now. But what he has done in the last three or four hopefully puts him in a much better position to move forward – that’s the plan.”

Daniel Ballard was not on the bench against Cardiff despite the Arsenal loanee playing 45 minutes for the club’s U23s last week. He had knee surgery in December.

“He could start any of those games but we’d have to then be aware that at 70 minutes we have to take him off – if you are 1-0 up that is not ideal,” said Rowett. “Ideally he needs to play 70 minutes but it is almost impossible to do a pre-planned change with a centre-half.”