Nobody cares’ – Frustrated Alex Neil’s verdict on Millwall’s defeat to Boro

‘Nobody cares’ – Frustrated Alex Neil’s verdict on Millwall’s defeat to Boro

 

A frustrated Alex Neil lambasted his Millwall side’s second half performance as they lost 3-0 to Middlesbrough.

 

Backed by a raucous crowd for their first home game of the season, Millwall applied a lot of early pressure on Boro but failed to make it count. As Boro escaped a difficult opening 20 minutes, they grew in the game before completely turning it around in the second half to win 3-0.

 

There were huge improvements from Rob Edwards’ side after the interval, with the head coach making an influential change to put Hayden Hackney back to midfield while introducing the lively Sontje Hansen. Despite Neil feeling his side were the better of the two teams for around two thirds of the match, he knows it counts for nothing, as he called the manner of Boro’s win ‘really cheap’.

 

“It wasn’t that type of game, let’s be honest,” Neil said. “We’ve all watched it. If you’re going to take over a ninety-minute match, I’d probably say for about 50, maybe even 60 of those minutes, I thought we were probably a better side than them. However, what happens is because the last 30, they were better, that’s what you leave everybody with.

 

“Ultimately, the score line will dictate the moral of the story. So in two months’ time, we’ll look back at that game and say ‘how crap were we’. We all know that isn’t how the game panned out. But let’s be honest, nobody cares. We lost the game 3-0.”

 

He continued: “As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter how we did in certain parts, how we did in certain spells. We still lost the game. We won’t dwell on it, but I think there’s a lot to learn for us in that game. I think there’s a lot to learn in the fact that, and I’ve said this repeatedly to the lads, we are not a possession-based team.

 

“I thought in the second half, we just played the ball in front of Middlesbrough really. Even when we did turn it forward, unless Cooper was up front, I don’t think we won a header. So that doesn’t help either. It was just cheap, really cheap.

 

“I didn’t think for spells of the second half that we did enough in the game. We didn’t win enough duels. We didn’t track our men well enough. We didn’t put a foot in at crucial times in the game, and that’s things I haven’t really seen from us since I’ve been here. So that’s probably the bits that we need to do better for me.

 

“When you start popping the ball about it and everybody wants to be a good player and all that sort of nonsense, what happens is you forget about your duels. You forget about the basics. You forget about running hard because you’re too busy thinking about your next touch and opening your angle and all that sort of stuff.”

 

Rob Edwards, head coach of Middlesbrough, applauds the fans

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