The Blues went in 1-0 to the good after a fairly dominant first half, but Millwall were probably the better of the sides after the break, and took a share of the points back to East London after Josh Coburn’s strike.
Jack Clarke gave Town a 1-0 lead (Image: Steve Waller)
Neil said: “I thought first half, I thought Ipswich were good. I thought they moved the ball really well.
“I didn’t think that we got a foothold in the game. I thought we were a bit panicky, we didn’t move the ball well. We pressed the way we normally press, but to be fair to them, I knew they were going to work on a lot of rotations to try and free up that spare player in the middle and they find them more often than not.
“The only thing I will say though, obviously they scored the goal and I think Pat (Anthony Patterson) has one other good save, where he makes a good save.
“Other than that, I didn’t think there was loads of chances, but I thought certainly if anybody was going to score, it was going to be them rather than us.
“But yeah, I wasn’t best pleased at half time. I thought they played better and we needed to do something to get back in the game.
“I think the goal was the catalyst really. I think if it was 0-0, I don’t know what I would have done at that point, but I think certainly when they score, we need to do something to try and get ourselves back into the game.”
Josh Coburn got the equaliser for Millwall (Image: Ross Halls)
Neil brought off Macaulay Longstaff at half-time, replacing him with big striker Mihailo Ivanovic and switching approach.
And he says the change in mindset which came with that was the key to the comeback – not that it was a move without risks.
“We went double aggressive on it, went one for one all over the pitch and at that point, one of two things that are always going to happen at this stage is we’ll get the next goal and we’ll get back into it and we might go on and win it, or it could get a little bit messy and it’s going to be a long afternoon,” he explained.
“So thankfully for me, I thought the players fully committed to it.
“I thought they were really aggressive, they went after the ball and I thought in the transitional moments, albeit I thought they carried the threat, equally so did we.
“Whereas in the first half, I thought they carried the threat and we didn’t really. So the game wasn’t really ever going to fall in our favour from that point of view.
“What we did do is, and this is what I want to make clear, because we took Macca (Longstaff) off and put Mika (Ivanovic) on, the game didn’t change on that. The game changed because we changed our press.
“Physical presence matters and that’s why I made the change. And then equally, I thought once we got the goal, we had a few opportunities at the end to get the winner. We were a bit unfortunate at the one that comes off the bar.
“But certainly at half-time, if you offered me a point, I would have took it at that stage.”
Of Town, he added: “What I will say, Ipswich are the best team at home in the division. They’ve got an unbelievable squad, they bring a lot of really good, strong players on.
“But I thought second half, I thought our lads more than matched up. Hence the reason why we managed to get a result.
“But it’s certainly not to be sniffed at coming here and getting a good result because they’re a really strong squad.”