Alex Neil hails ‘brilliant’ performance as Millwall keep promotion charge going

Alex Neil hailed a “brilliant” three points as Millwall kept up their push for an automatic promotion spot with a 2-0 win over Preston at Deepdale.

Ryan Leonard scored his first Championship goal of the season with a delightful curling strike in the 29th minute and substitute Luke Cundle sealed the win in second-half stoppage time.

They are one point away from second-placed Middlesbrough having played a game more and it was an assured performance that cemented their credentials as one of the division’s strongest looking outfits.

The Millwall boss said: “I think it was always going to be a tough game. I think if you take it in contrast to the Birmingham game, which was very tactical, very much a high-press, because the difference here was the pitch.

“I feel sorry for Preston in the fact that it’s really difficult to get the ball moving on that. It basically becomes a second-ball game and [to] make sure you defend well, get ahead of your man, [win] duels. It doesn’t make for good viewing if I’m being honest.

“However, it’s the same for both teams so we don’t want to use that as an excuse. We spoke about making sure that, if you want to be successful at this level, you can win games in a variety of different ways.

“We spoke about keeping the ball in front of them because we know they want to get down the sides and get in behind but if you can keep them in front of you then they need to make passes and then what happens is they start to open their shape up and we have spaces to break into and that’s how we nick it.”

It was Leonard’s first league goal in over five years and Neil heralded the strike as a “brilliant finish”.

Preston boss Paul Heckingbottom had no issues with the result which marked a fourth match without a victory for the Lilywhites as their play-off push faded away.

The Preston manager said: “The better team won in terms of the chances created. I’ve got no complaints. The game had no surprises. They’re a very difficult team to play against and arguably they do the basics better than anyone in this league. Their experienced players know what their strengths are and they play to those strengths.

“I’ve only seen moments back in the game where we got so far, we outnumbered them behind their midfield, getting [into] good [situations] and we actually outnumbered them in the box as well. The initial thoughts from those moments are that a little bit more quality in those areas, or sometimes pure luck, was the difference.”

North End struggled to create many clear openings throughout the match and were left frustrated by a resilient, well-oiled, defensive machine.

He added: “[Andrija Vukcevic] got [a ball] to [Daniel Jebbison] and to [Brad Potts] when we got them free but then it’s the execution because we’re in those positions quite a lot. In those moments, you need a bit of luck for the ball to drop to that spare player because we generally created it and then in other moments it’s the quality, the decision and the quality.”