Millwall boss makes big Derby County claim - 'I wouldn't have believed you'

Alex Neil says Derby County are better than their form currently suggests after carrying out his homework on John Eustace's side this week. Derby head to the New Den tomorrow looking to secure only their second win of the season in what has been a tough start to the campaign, just five months after they finished on the cusp of the play-offs.

Turki Alalshikh's takeover that collapsed at the 11th hour saw transfer business delayed while Derby's defence has also been decimated by injury. But Neil said he has seen enough of Derby to suggest they are not as bad as their league position suggests and they head to the capital tomorrow on the back of a 1-1 draw against Sheffield United where they played the last half-hour with 10 men.

“I’ve seen three of their games in the last two days,” Neil told NewsAtDen. “And they’re all right. I watched them against Birmingham, and if you said to me they’re at the top end of the division, they’re at the bottom, I wouldn’t have believed you.

"But what happened was Derby had good moments, and then Birmingham went straight up the other side of the pitch and scored. West Brom did the exact same thing to them as well.

“Derby are not far away from where they were last year.

"But they’ve not started the season well. They’ve had a few injuries themselves, like a lot of teams at this level have. It’s going to be a real competitive game. They’re going to want the points as much as we are. We just need to make sure that we perform on the day.”

Millwall have had their own issues to contend with and like Derby they were dealing with 12 injuries at the start of September. But they have gradually welcomed players back into the fold although they are likely to be without influential striker Josh Coburn for tomorrow's game.

They have won just one of their last seven games and asked where they need to improve, Neil said: "Both boxes. It really is as simple as that. Our play between boxes at the weekend was good.

“We look at data, and we look at stats across the season, and our data over the last sort of four or five games since we came back from the international break shows we deny the opposition entry into our final third more than any other team so far.

“Now, I don’t want to start throwing in data points, because nobody really gives a shit, least of all me. But the point I’m making is, we consciously look at all our metrics to make sure that if we’re underperforming in anything specific, I spend a little bit more time on it to make sure that we try and bring it up to a standard where it’s not going to be a negative for us.

“But we’ve done a lot of things right in the last few games, albeit it doesn’t feel that way because of the results that we’ve had. I didn’t think we deserved to lose against Swansea. I didn’t think we deserved to lose against Portsmouth. But the simple fact is we did. So I just need to suck that up, and what we need to do is try and perform better in the next game.

“We need to try and make sure, like I say, in both boxes, one, we don’t give cheap goals away, and two, we’re more clinical, and we take our opportunities.

“Right now, as it stands, I think we’re something like fifth in the league for expected goals. We’re ninth in the league for expected goals against. So there are not loads of things that are absolutely catastrophic. What it means is we just need to make the difference on the day, and at the moment, we’re finding a way, as we did on Saturday, to make that count against us.”

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