‘Quite poor’ – Stoke City boss has dig at official despite 1-0 win over Millwall

Michael O’Neill was pleased that Stoke City cut off the spaces which prevented Millwall from using their wing-backs as effectively as they usually do.

Danny McNamara and Scott Malone are deployed wide and high to give the Lions extra attacking edge but they struggled do that as they lost 1-0.

Millwall slipped to their first defeat in nine Championship matches after goals from Jacob Brown and a George Saville own goal gave the Potters all three points.

O’Neill said: “Millwall switch the ball and their wing-backs are high. It was very important they [the attackers] did the work today because it meant we were able to stay nice and narrow as a back four which meant there wasn’t a lot of space for the likes of Jed Wallace to run into.

“When you’re not winning it’s the worse feeling ever. You go through games and look and think how did we not win that game?

“We’ve had a lot of that this season – where we come in and we’ve felt a little bit hard done by in games – some of that is self inflicted.

“We got a really good controlled performance today. There was really good application from all the players. Really strong out of possession, defensively very good and we played some very good football as well.”

The former Northern Ireland manager was stunned that referee John Brooks did not award Stoke City a penalty in the first half.

Jake Cooper appeared to drag down Josh Murphy in the Millwall penalty area but the referee saw nothing wrong with it.

O’Neill added: “It’s a penalty in the first half, my god. It’s a penalty but some of the challenges that go unpunished and then what he [the referee] decides to give I’m at a loss sometimes.

“Millwall are a physical team, they’ve got three centre-backs that are strong and physical players. Josh Maja was excellent but there was a lot of fouls on him that weren’t given. It was quite poor.”