Preston North End halted their losing streak with a 1-1 draw at Deepdale. Managerless Millwall got themselves back into the game after Mads Frokjær had given North End an early lead.
It was Zian Flemming with his fifth goal in three games against Preston and we’d hope he is unavailable for The Lions next time we meet.
A strong start not built upon
Preston started the game very brightly with The Lilywhites putting Millwall on the back foot and looking to exploit areas. Brad Potts had caused problems with an early run before Jordan Storey found himself carrying the ball into a dangerous area.
He laid it off to Will Keane who found Frokjær who stroked the ball home for his third of the season.
Duane Holmes then had a good chance as the game looked to be there for the taking. As usual Holmes seems to find so much space just running centrally and directly.
After that we let Millwall back into the game as they found it quite easy to run through the middle of us. Flemming shouldn’t be given that much space and it was a cracking finish from the Dutchman.
The midfield was too slow to react to anything though and Greg Cunningham shouldn’t have gone to ground.
Options from the bench to change it up
This season Ryan Lowe has always seemed to have some good options to mix the game up. Saturday was no different, with three strikers available to him including the return of Ched Evans after a seven month lay-off. He also had his captain on the bench and the tricky Liam Millar.
The attacking part of our game had become stagnant and it was brought to life again with the substitutions. There is more depth this season and it was one sub in particular who looked the most likely to find a winner for us.
Millar has to start ahead of Brady
There does always seem to be one player that the majority of the fans point the finger at when’s things aren’t going to plan. Unfortunately for him that is Robbie Brady now.
But it is hard to see what he offers in this team. He lost possession quite a few times again on Saturday and he holds this team back in attacking areas.
As soon as Millar came on he ran at the defence and won a corner and a free kick within three minutes. He looks to get in the area and brings other players into the game.
Millar hasn’t quite reached the heights of his debut against Plymouth Argyle but the quality is clearly there. If we want to score goals then it has to be Millar over Brady.
I think a lot of fans minds are made up on the Irishman. There were cheers when his number was held up to be subbed off, whilst there was also confusion among the fans when Duane Holmes was brought off.
Selection headaches for Lowe
With the return of Evans, the manager now has three options for what is usually one striker up front. Emil Riis hopefully isn’t too far away from a return.
There’s even more options in midfield. Ben Whiteman has returned but wasn’t at his best on Saturday. Ryan Ledson has been solid and has started 10 of the 12 games in midfield.
Alan Browne and Ali McCann are reliable performers and then Holmes and Frokjaer are out most attacking options. It’s tough to know what our best team is at this stage, but Lowe needs to work out what is most effective for us going forward.
At times we look free flowing and can open teams up but on the other hand we can also go through stages of looking like we’ve run out of ideas.
We are still yet to score more than two goals in a game this season, which isn’t the end of the world but it would be nice to have a convincing victory at some point.