MILLWALL boss Neil Harris said his side were “hurt” when they lost to Gillingham in December, as Shane Ferguson revealed he has received words of advice from fans this week.
Justin Edinburgh’s side were strong favourites for promotion after their 3-0 win over the Lions left them second in the table, but Millwall can now deny them a top-six finish.
Millwall know they will finish in the play-off spots, and the final league positions this weekend will determine whether they meet Bradford, Barnsley or Scunthorpe in the semi-final.
Even though Millwall were well beaten by the Gills at The Den at the end of last year, Harris saw signs to be encouraged by their performance that day.
“We’ve come a long way since then,” Harris said. “There were a lot of positives in that game. We played well until Jordan Archer got a red card and then they scored the penalty.
“After that we were fantastic, we were the better team with ten 10. That gave us a lot of confidence.
“It’s a local derby in this division. There is a rivalry between the clubs and the fans because we’re close to each other. So we are conscious of that.
“It’s a game I’m excited about, we want to finish with real momentum.
“The result at The Den hurt us and we want to put that right.”
Millwall need to win at Priestfield Stadium to be in with a chance of finishing third in the table, and Ferguson has been made aware by supporters how much a positive result in the fixture would mean to them.
“There’s still something to play for because we want to obviously want to finish as high as possible,” Ferguson said.
“I was speaking to a lot of fans at the club’s awards dinner the other night and they were saying they really want to get one over on Gillingham.
“We know it’s like a derby as well and we’re really looking forward to it.
“Hopefully we can get the win because it wasn’t one of our best performances against them last time out and we want to make up for that.
“It just shows how far we’ve come since then. We didn’t get off to the best of starts but you can see how much we’ve improved as a team.”