'Thankfully' - Alex Neil names player's 'great' moment during Millwall vs Watford - and it wasn't the goal

Millwall boss Alex Neil pointed to a big moment during his side’s narrow win over Watford on Monday night. The Lions picked up their first league win of the season at the third attempt thanks to a superbly executed free-kick from Camiel Neghli in the first half.

There were chances for both sides in a well-contested clash at The Den, but Millwall ultimately got the job done to secure their first home win and their third win of the season overall, moving up to 10th place.

The biggest scare for Millwall came late in the game when a corner dropped in the box and was turned goalward, but Steven Benda, who seemed to know little about it, managed to get in the way and deflect it wide. The shot appeared to come too quickly for him to even react, but his positioning as enough to protect the clean sheet and the win.

Millwall boss Neil pointed to that incident after the game, telling Southwark News: “The first half, you saw some really good bits from us,” Neil said. “I thought our movement with the ball was good, we created some good chances first half. Probably more frustrated we didn’t score more than one.

“I thought we got in some good areas. The one that stands out is maybe Josh’s chance when it comes back and he puts it over the bar. I thought we were good value. Second half, we had to dig in. I thought certainly the last twenty minutes, the game became stretched. We got deeper. You could see some of our lads tiring.

“We’ve got young Derek [Mazuo-Sacko] who’s just come in, and we’ve had to rely on to play games. We’ve got [Thierno] Ballo who’s just come in to play games. Aidomo [Emakhu] was being sick at half-time, so we had to get him through fifteen minutes to try and take him off, because Will [Smallbone] and Macca are only really ready to do thirty minutes each. So a few bits to juggle, kind of difficult bits.

“We changed shape at the end. The ball wouldn’t go out of play for about five minutes so I could change the shape. But once the lads got in there, I think after that they’d one chance from a corner that Steven makes a great save with his feet, which shouldn’t really happen. We’ve got about seven six-foot lads in the middle of the box at that point, so we should probably win that header. But that was their chance to get us all back into the game, and thankfully for us Steven managed to save it.”

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