‘Blackburn punished us more than we punished them’ – Millwall boss Neil on damaging Championship loss

Alex Neil bemoaned the poor period across both halves that saw Blackburn all but extinguish Millwall’s Championship play-off hopes.

Two quickfire goals for the hosts at the end of the first half, sandwiched by a response from Mihailo Ivanovic, meant the Lions trailed 2-1 at the break. But a goal four minutes after the restart, followed by a defensive error which enabled Sandre Tronstrad to score his second of the match, killed off Millwall’s chances of taking any points back to SE16.

The Lions had chances in the first half and were unfortunate to go in behind.

But Neil had no complaints after his side failed to make the most of them, with the result leaving them six points off the top-six with just three games remaining.

The Scot was asked for his feelings on the game by Millwall TV and said: “Obviously frustrating, disappointed. The first half was really quite open for both teams. We had quite a few opportunities before half-time, they unfortunately get the first goal. We then go and get the next goal and then we’ve got to manage ourselves until half-time.

“They get the goal, which is disappointing and bad timing for us, then we go in and talk about making sure we impact the second half well. We have a great chance with Josh Coburn and then literally two minutes after that we concede again. They start with the ball in the final third and we don’t get as much pressure on the ball as we normally do and they play through us and it ends up in the back of the net.

“From there you start chasing the game and making bad decisions. We play short from a goal-kick – God knows why – we give the ball away and it’s a great finish from the lad, but we played a part in that goal. That sort of put the game to bed really.

“The game was really open and in the first half that suited us. But ultimately we needed to take our chances and we didn’t. Blackburn punished us more than we punished them.

“I’m trying to get the balance at the moment between playing good football and turning the ball. Turning the ball in recent games has served us really well, playing off the second balls and things like that, but their centre-backs were really good and we didn’t get much change out of them at all.”