Manager Neil Harris has said he feels that tomorrow’s trip to Port Vale will be the toughest game we have faced so far this year.
With back to back victories with Peterborough and Crewe in recent games, Port Vale have only lost once so far this year, and despite victory tomorrow meaning Millwall would move into the top half of the table, Harris explained to the South London Press that nobody was looking at the table or thinking about that, they were all fully focused on what would be a tough game.
‘We`re honestly not discussing that as a group. We really are concentrating on ourselves. We know there is a lot of potential in the group – short, medium and long-term potential. We know we`ve not been firing on all cylinders and have got lots to improve on – even after back-to-back wins.’
Harris went on to say that what we need to do is find the consistency in our performance over the course of 90 minutes, but he feels that having shown signs of that happening, everybody can see it for themselves in the last two victories we’ve put together, but it’s still small steps at the moment and nobody is getting carried away as for him, we still have an awful lot of work to do.
‘We`ve got consistency to find over a 90-minute period but we`re taking small steps – we`re taking small steps to get the giant ones.’
As for Port Vale specifically, he went on to explain.
‘We go to Port Vale with some momentum and confidence. We know Port Vale is an extremely difficult game – probably our toughest so far. They will certainly match our workrate and have got some quality.’
NewsatDen also have the gaffer quoted talking about the balance in the team, and he feels he’s now getting that right in the starting eleven.
‘We spoke after the Peterborough game and we asked them, ‘Do we want to play Saturday?` and the boys said ‘Yeah, we`d love to`. So we decided to use that momentum all week. Sometimes you can go flat in the international break but the boys didn`t have more time off than we would normally give them. They worked hard in the sessions we did because we wanted to build on the Peterborough performance. We still have a lot to learn. It`s a young group that is getting an opportunity to play in the first team and they are going to make mistakes. But if the experienced players perform as they did against Peterborough and Crewe then that will guide the youngsters through what can be difficult times. I though the mix and blend and the quality of performance last time was spot on.’
Vital Millwall on:
Vital Millwall on:
Harris Expects Tough Vale Test
