ALEX Neil said Millwall’s clash with Middlesbrough carries added importance but stressed the result will not decide his side’s season.
The Lions travel to the Riverside Stadium to take on second-placed Boro in their first game after the international break, with the two sides only separated by two places and two points.
A win on Friday would see Millwall leap their opponents and Ipswich Town, who do not play until Easter Monday, into the automatic promotion places with six games remaining.
Neil acknowledged the added significance of the clash.
“We just look at it as another game that we can win,” Neil said. “Naturally, when you’re playing a team next to you in the league, then it does have that extra bit of importance in the fact that you don’t want them to extend themselves three points away from you, because if they win and you can’t, then that naturally extends.
“It gives them or us a little bit of an advantage. However, there are still six games remaining after that, so there’s loads to be played for. There’s still loads to happen.
“I think there are going to be a lot of twists and turns between now and the end of the season. But we’re not naive in the fact that with each game that goes by, the next game becomes more important because we’re running out of matches.”
Regardless of the result, Millwall are still well placed to make the Championship play-offs for the first time in over 20 years. They are six points clear of seventh-placed Wrexham after a strong run of form since the New Year.
“The league table will represent across the 46 games who deserves to be where they are,” Neil said. “It really is as simple as that.
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“We’ve done well to this point, but what we don’t want to do is do well for 39 games; we need to do well for 46 games. We may win, lose, draw, whatever the next result may be, we’ve still got six games after that, so there’s no point winning against Middlesbrough and then losing the next six because that isn’t going to potentially get us where we want to go.
“We just need to attack each game as it comes. We don’t get too high, we don’t get too low, and we know what we’ve got to do. The importance of the games is not lost on us, but we’ve treated every game this season with utmost importance. It’s another game for us, where we need to do the same thing.”
