There are three players in the Charlton squad who know what it is like to be on the winning away side in a senior game at The New Den.

Jake Foster-Caskey came on as a 65th minute substitute in Brighton's 1-0 victory there in March 2014. Deji Oshilage was a part of the Gillingham team that triumphed 3-0 in December 2015. But Darren Pratley has felt that winning feeling on two occasions - and he scored both times. In April 2011 he set Swansea on their way to a 2-0 win with a thirtieth minute goal and he was back again just before Christmas 2014 with the only goal in Bolton's 1-0 victory.

Charlton will certainly need that sort of winning mentality on Saturday as the team seeks yet again to improve on the club's appalling record against what Boris Johnson would no doubt call "our  friends and colleagues in Bermondsey." The statistics are painfully well known. We are looking at just five wins at Millwall in a hundred years of competition - and one of those was in the Anglo-Italian Cup. It is nearly twenty four years since we last won there and we can boast just eleven wins in our total of seventy two League encounters. Our record against them is worse than against any other club - with a win every 6.5 games, compared for example with every 5.7 games against Arsenal and Manchester United.*

I could go on, but I won't.

This is The Lions' third season in The Championship since they pipped Bradford City (including Josh Cullen) at Wembley to gain promotion in May 2017. They achieved a remarkable 8th place in 2017/18 when a sixteen match unbeaten run saw them in the play-off places with four games to go. Last season was  a different story and they hovered just above the bottom three from October onwards and finally escaped relegation by four points. This season they have been solid at home where they have beaten Preston, Sheffield Wednesday, Leeds and Stoke and drawn with Cardiff and Hull. QPR are the only team to have beaten them at The Den. The fact that Millwall sit in 17th place is down to their away form - they have yet to win on their travels.

Tom Bradshaw and Jed Wallace carry their goal threat following the departure of Lee Gregory (64 goals in five seasons) to Stoke in the summer. Bradshaw, who arrived at Millwall after spells at Shrewsbury, Walsall and Barnsley, has already scored seven this season. Wallace - former Portsmouth and Wolves - has six.

Of course, as well as our three victorious players, we also have a manager who knows what it is like to win at The Den, even though he only stayed on the pitch for twenty one minutes on that snowy night in 1995. Lee Bowyer has instilled into this Charlton squad just the sort of mentality which will be needed to recognise that all the doom-laden statistics are history and nothing more. They have no bearing whatsoever on the ninety minutes of football (plus added time) which will be played on Saturday afternoon.

Our role models are Sid Castle (1921); Ralph Allen and Harold Hobbis (1935); Peter Shaw and Dave Shipperley (1978) and Kim Grant (1995).

We come to create history, not repeat it.

*ignoring Dagenham & Redbridge (no wins in two games)