RYAN Leonard knows Millwall have been criticised after their recent run but he said: “We need to deal with it.”
The Lions came from behind to draw 1-1 at Huddersfield Town on Saturday and their wait for a Championship win is six games ahead of Wednesday night’s visit to Luton Town.
Millwall then play bitter rivals Leeds on Saturday.
“It is what it is but we need to deal with that,” Leonard said. “It’s been a tough start. We got seven points from the first three games, which is a great start. We fell off it a little bit, we’ve probably not performed to the level we can and not picked up results.
“But as a team we need to stick together, we’ve said that, the manager’s said that we all need to stick together as a football club and just keep grinding out results and the wins will come.
“[Saturday] was disappointing but we need to stick together and keep working hard. It’s a big week for us, we’ve got two big games coming up.”
Leonard’s long-range shot that was tipped behind by Kamil Grabara led to the corner from which Matt Smith scored.
Leonard continued: “I think we have to be honest and say it’s a fair result. I thought first half we played some good stuff, created some good chances. I think we let ourselves down in the second half a little bit, so all in all I think a point is a fair result.
“We just needed to get a foothold in the game. We knew it was going to be tough with the reaction of a new manager in charge. We had to use our experience a little bit and get a foothold in the game and I think we did that really well.
“Pressure builds the more games you don’t win but I thought first half we played some really good stuff. But the second half was disappointing. I think we need to take the positives into Wednesday night at Luton and do what we did in the first half.”
Lions left-back Shane Ferguson was sent off 11 minutes from time after two bookings.
“I think we created the pressure ourselves, to be fair,” Leonard said. “We gave the ball away too much, the gaffer said after the game the quality wasn’t quite there in the second half which was disappointing. I think we invited the pressure ourselves and obviously going down to 10 men we just tried to see the game out, if we could get any half chances we’d go from there, but once the red card came, we just needed to try and stay in the game.”
“It was a case of it being two good yellow cards,” Leonard admitted. “The guy [Adama Diakhaby] has done well since he came on and Fergie has done his best. He’s got the wrong side of him and made a last-ditch tackle. It’s one of those in football, if you make the tackle it’s great but if you miss it you open yourself up to a second yellow.
“I don’t think there is much he could do there, really. We had to stick together after that, the manager brought Murray [Wallace] on and he did really well last 10 minutes.”
Image: Millwall FC