ALEX Neil insisted he will focus only on what he can control as promotion-chasing Millwall head into the final four games of the season.
Third-placed Millwall are closing in on their first Championship play-off appearance in over 20 years after Wrexham were beaten 2-0 by Birmingham City on Sunday, leaving them nine points clear of seventh with four games to go.
The Lions are also still not out of the running for automatic promotion, although an Easter Monday loss to Norwich City and a draw at West Bromwich Albion last Friday mean second-placed Ipswich Town have a two-point lead with two games in hand.
With Millwall playing before promotion rivals in their next three league fixtures and teams jostling for position at the top of the table, the Lions’ head coach made it clear he is not getting drawn into results elsewhere.
“We just focus on the next game”, Neil said after the 0-0 stalemate at The Hawthorns. “I’m not thinking about what Ipswich and [fourth-placed] Middlesbrough are doing tonight. The score will be the score. I can’t affect it.
“I don’t wake up in the morning thinking, ‘Oh, please lose.’ I don’t think that at all. What I think is we need to focus on the next game, try and win the next game, and see after 46, we’ll be where we deserve to be.
“This team has done unbelievably well. Unbelievably. If you said to any Millwall fan at the start of the season we’d be second with four games to play, I don’t think they’d believe you. That’s how well this team’s done, and they deserve all the credit they deserve.
“We haven’t been in the top six for 24 years. So that’s an unbelievable achievement for this group of players. If you look across the league, you’ve got so many other teams where everybody’s expectations are up there, and they’re down the bottom end, fighting and scrapping and trying to pick up points.
“I’ve got nothing but pride for what we’ve done at this point. But we want to try to achieve something. So we’ve got four games to try and win points, and then we’ll see where we are.”
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