Steve Morison: It would be typical Millwall for us to beat Norwich City tomorrow

BY JAKE SANDERS

Steve Morison reckons that it would be typical Millwall to defy the odds and beat his former side Norwich City at The Den tomorrow afternoon.

The Lions go into the game against the Championship table-toppers looking to avoid three consecutive defeats for the first time since September after a 2-1 loss at Hull City on Tuesday.

“We didn’t do enough, did we?” Morison, 35, said. “We did alright. I would rather lose playing like that than play like we did in the first-half [against Preston] on Saturday.

“It’s disappointing. We will take the positives – it was a better performance, we had the better chances.

“Obviously, it’s frustrating. We could have been seven points clear, but we are still four. One of them teams or two of them teams have got to win back-to-back games, which I don’t think they have done all year, so we need to keep plugging away.

“You know what this football club is like, we will end up beating Norwich on Saturday.

“They have done brilliantly [Norwich]. Every time you see them they’re fantastic.

“They have sold out both tiers as a few people like to tell me. They’re really proud of themselves for doing that.  I don’t know why they want to text me and tell me about it, I don’t really care. They feel like they want to tell me about it, so I am really pleased for them. Saturday, it will be a tough game against a very, very good team. Hopefully we can do what we do when the odds are against us.”

Asked whether Norwich having an extended allocation – selling out their 3,000 tickets which gives them some of the bottom section in the North Stand –  will bring the best out of the home fans, Morison said: “Yes, definitely. They will love it. It will be good.”

Millwall had kept three consecutive clean sheets before Preston, but have now conceded five in the space of 180 minutes.

Morison knows they must stop conceding cheap goals, especially with the Championship’s top-scorers in town. The Canaries have netted two-or-more goals in six of their last seven games.

He said: “That’s football, isn’t it? Its nuts. It’s just one of those things. We just need to stop giving sloppy goals away. Saturday was maybe a step too far for a few of the lads, and the gaffer held his hands up on that.

“You don’t like conceding goals after being so good last season at limiting it to noughts and ones. We have been at that since Christmas, so it’s a couple of frustrating results.”

Right-back Mahlon Romeo missed the trip to the KCOM Stadium through illness – and the Lions’ injury problems were worsened after just 13 minutes when Murray Wallace hobbled off. With Conor McLaughlin and James Meredith still out of action and Tom Bradshaw sidelined for the rest of the season, the Lions have just 17 fit first-team outfield players.

Morison continued: “Mahlon wasn’t available so then Lenny [Ryan Leonard] had to go to right-back. We had worked on playing a certain way and it just then all changes. We adapted kind of well. We ended up getting the equaliser, but it’s that sucker-punch just before half-time that kills us a little bit, because I think second-half we were the better team. You would have liked to have gone in at 1-1 and possibly come out and gone and won the game.
“We have got a small squad. You look at the squad lists on the back of these programmes. It’s ridiculous what some of these clubs have got. It is tough, tough on our boys.

“You can see some of them out there are absolutely knackered. They are going to enjoy the next couple of days resting and then we come back in Thursday and get ready for Saturday. It has been tough – Wednesday to Saturday and then Saturday to Tuesday is a tough old slog. Unfortunately we have only managed to win one. We will dust ourselves down and go again.”

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