Millwall boss delighted with pre-season efforts ahead of Canaries opener.

By Paul Green

ALEX Neil says he can’t fault Millwall’s preseason, which ended today with a 3-0 home victory over Estoril Praia. All of the goals came in the first half, with Mihailo Ivanovic opening the scoring and Josh Coburn adding two more.

The Lions have produced some decent stuff in the lead-up to next weekend’s Championship trip to Norwich, and the Den manager has been suitably impressed.

Neil told me: “It has been a really good pre-season for us.” We’ve played in a variety of ways and against a variety of opponents, including games in which we were dominant with the ball and attempted to break someone down. Today, we needed to be transitional and try to counter.

“There have been games where we pressed and appeared aggressive. “Today we were a little bit more passive and stayed in our shape, so all the boxes we wanted to tick across pre-season we’ve managed to do so.”

Despite today’s impressive performance, Neil was quick to point out that it will likely make little difference who starts against the Canaries seven days later.

“The changes we made (in the second half) were simply to get more minutes in the legs and prepare for a game similar to Norwich.

“As I told the lads before the game, the way I work is that I will obviously take a good look at Norwich this week and pick the team I believe has the best chance of winning that game. “This game will have little relevance to that, other than the fact that when you play well, you put yourself in a better position.

“A lot of the lads did that today, which is great.” Even though the manager was pleased with Coburn and Ivanovic’s goals, he felt his two strikers could have scored more. “They even had more chances,” Neil explained. “There were a few times during the game where they could have added to their total.

“Tristan Crama had two corners where he (Coburn) should probably put his head on each. It was a strong, disciplined performance. Certainly, as the game progressed, we could see they moved the ball very well.

“You can’t press for the entire game, so I believe we struck the right balance in terms of how we approached it. “I thought we were very good. It was a useful test for us. “Estoril are a good team, so we had to be patient at times and pick and choose when to jump and recover the ball.”At one point, I believed we posed a serious threat.

We scored three goals and probably could have scored more during the game. “Defensively, we were pretty solid. I don’t remember much about whether they should have scored.

“From that perspective to play against good quality opposition and restrict them, while also looking a real threat, I thought we got the balance right.”

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