Harris plays down play-off hopes

Posted Wednesday, February 21, 2018 by PA

Millwall’s Neil Harris dismissed his team’s chances of reaching the Championship play-offs despite them moving into contention with a 2-1 defeat of Sheffield Wednesday.

Victory took them up to 11th place, within eight points of the top six, and five of the target of 50 he had set at the season’s start.

They reached the division via last season’s League One play-offs but, asked about the chances of a repeat, 40-year-old Harris said: “Let’s not get carried away with ourselves.

“I know the points gap’s decreased, we’re pushing at the moment, it’s a great place for my players to be, the company we’re in in this divison, and full credit goes to the squad. But we’ve got a long way to go.

“We just want to keep going. The boys are loving it, the staff are enjoying it.

“Second half the players were outstanding. We scored the two goals, we could have scored a couple more, and when we had to stand strong and defend, we did. I’m really pleased for the players.

“My sole aim was to get to 50 points. We’ve got to get five from our last 13 games.

“What we have done now, 33 games in, is show ourselves to be competitive at this level and shown ourselves to be as good a squad as a lot of expensively assembled squads.”

Harris’ team secured all three points with second-half goals from Lee Gregory and Neil Harris, after Joey Pelupessy’s fine strike, his first for Wednesday, had given his team a half-time lead.

The visitors’ Jordan Thorniley was knocked unconscious and suffered a suspected facial injury when he unluckily took a boot to the head from Jed Wallace as he slipped while both chased a loose ball.

He regained consciousness after being taken off on a stretcher and then to the hospital, and Harris added: “I hope young Jordan Thorniley’s going to be okay: he got a horrific injury by the looks of it. The thoughts of me and my players are with him.”

Wednesday remain in the relative safety of 16th and their manager Jos Luhukay explained: “We don’t have a good feeling about the injury. Jordan’s gone to hospital with our doctor.

“I think a foot from the opponent unluckily hit his face.

“I could not see the situation from my position, so I can’t say (if Millwall should have put the ball out). Just a couple of seconds later Jordan was lying on the floor.

“We are very disappointed, we lost the game in just a couple of minutes in the second half: we must look to ourselves.

“We learn from every game, we’ve had good recent performances but the confidence after five minutes was not there.”