'Football humbles you' - Millwall boss Alex Neil issues warning ahead of Sheffield Wednesday clash
Alex Neil refuses to let his team underestimate Sheffield Wednesday, despite the Owls’ horrible run of form in the Championship.
Wednesday play host to the Lions this weekend for what will be Barry Bannan’s first game back at Hillsborough following his departure last month, and are heavy favourites as they gun for a place in this year’s play-offs.
The hosts, meanwhile, haven’t won since September and are on a lengthy run without even scoring a goal, with confirmation of their relegation expected in the next week or so. They sit bottom of the table with -7 points, and face a Millwall side that has only lost one of their last nine matches.
Neil saw his side clinch a narrow 1-0 win over the Owls back in November, so has an idea of what to expect from Henrik Pedersen’s men, and he insists that there will be no walk in the park for his players.
Alex Neil on Sheffield Wednesday
“What we’re not going to do is get ahead of ourselves,” he told NewsAtDen. “The one thing with football is it humbles you really quite quickly. When you think everything’s going well, and we’re all great and all the rest of it, then that’s when you normally fall flat on your face, and you lose a game that people might expect you to win. This weekend’s certainly going to be in that category for us, in the fact that there’s going to be a high expectancy that we just go there, and we turn up, and we win the game.
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“As we know, that’s not going to be the case. It’s going to be a tough match. They are not going to want to lose. They’ve just had a bad defeat in the last game. We had to work extremely hard in the home tie to win 1-0. This may well be the same. We’re going to have to work extremely hard to go and win the game.
“I understand the narrative around it. I understand the feeling about the game. We’ll be treating this game with the utmost importance.”
Millwall could potentially move up to third if they beat Wednesday and other results go their way this weekend, while the home side are simply playing for pride at this point - and trying to avoid going an entire season without winning a league game at Hillsborough.