ALEX Neil said he waited to switch to a more aggressive style of play against Ipswich Town as “you can’t play that way for 90 minutes.”
The Lions were outfought by the home side for the opening 45 minutes and went into half-time behind after Jack Clarke’s long-range effort swerved past Anthony Patterson.
Neil changed his approach during the interval, going man-to-man across the pitch and bringing on a more physical striker in Mihailo Ivanovic.
Within five minutes, Millwall had the equaliser and, spurred on by further substitutions in the form of Barry Bannan, Tom Watson and Derek Mazou-Sacko, pushed for a late winner, with Ivanovic smacking the underside of the bar.
The changes required significant physical output, and many of the Lions were visibly exhausted by the final whistle.
“This is why I didn’t do it in the first half, because I know what the narrative’s going to be – we should have done that in the first half,” Neil said. “You can’t play that way for 90 minutes. It’s nearly impossible.
“The reason I was making so many substitutions, and they were aggressive substitutions, was that you need fresh legs if you’re going to do that. We did it for 45 minutes, but you could see at the end they were absolutely dead on their feet.
“It’s not easy chasing Ipswich’s players about the pitch. Our lads did it for 45 minutes and did it really well. I was just continually adding more fresh energy onto it because the game ends up becoming stretched, particularly when they brought the two big boys on [Chuba Akpom and George Hirst in the 72nd minute], because then they stretch it that way. We’re pinning them in that way, and the middle of the pitch becomes huge.
“But thankfully for us, that freshness I thought helped to land on things, and then it allowed us to play forward and attack their goal at that stage.”