MURRAY Wallace believes Brentford showed form counts for little in the Championship – as Millwall try to bounce back from their eighth defeat of the season when they face second-place Norwich City next Saturday.
The Bees hadn’t won in eight league games before beating Millwall 2-0 on Saturday. The Lions have taken just two points out of 24 from away games this season.
After winning just one of their opening six league games, the Canaries have been in sensational form, and Saturday’s 4-0 win at Sheffield Wednesday was their eighth in their last 10 league fixtures.
Millwall didn’t win away until January 20 last season, before the 4-3 defeat of Leeds was the first of six successive victories on the road.
Wallace is hoping next Saturday can be a similar turning point in the season.
“You look at these and think they hadn’t won in eight games and that it was a good time to play them, but it’s not like that at all,” Wallace said.
“[Norwich’s] confidence will be high. We just need to look at it as an away game that we need to pick up points from.
“We’ve got good form at The Den at the minute but it’s so important we start picking up points away from home.
“Obviously I wasn’t here last year but keeping an eye on the teams it did stand out when we won something like six in a row and got loads of clean sheets. We’re hoping that one result sparks that.
“I think we’re conceding quite soft goals, I wouldn’t say we’re playing terribly away. Against Reading we absolutely battered them but conceded three goals. Nottingham Forest, we battered them as well, but to be fair to them they scored two good goals.
“I wouldn’t say it’s a lack of desire of poor performances but mentally we need to be stronger and focus on keeping clean sheets.
“The last thing we want to be thinking is it’s an away game, we’re going to be under pressure. We’ve got massive belief and confidence in ourselves playing at home, we’ve just got to carry that into away games.
“We need to be harder to score against on the road. I don’t think our performances have been terrible but obviously there’s room for improvement.
“You look at a lot of the goals we’ve conceded and unusually they’re coming from set-pieces and that’s something we pride ourselves on, that we’re not going to concede from set-plays.”
Brentford scored twice in the second half through Sergi Canos and Ollie Watkins.
Wallace added: “I don’t think we really imposed ourselves on the game, they had a lot of possession and dominated. But for all the possession they had I didn’t think they were carving us open. I thought we had quite good shape, especially in the first half when we limited their chances.
“Then we concede early in the second half and have to start chasing the game and it’s opened up us a little bit more.”
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