'Things I won't accept' - Paul Heckingbottom pulls no punches after Preston North End's loss to Millwall
PNE were beaten 3-1 at The Den on Saturday
Preston North End manager Paul Heckingbottom said he was ‘disappointed’ in his team for the first time, after Saturday’s 3-1 loss to Millwall.
The Lilywhites’ winless run against the Lions extended to 11 games, with it the second Championship defeat under Heckingbottom. George Honeyman broke the deadlock in the first half and Romain Esse doubled the hosts’ lead, with seven minutes of it left to play.
Straight after the restart, Macauley Langstaff grabbed his first goal in Millwall colours to effectively kill the game. Jordan Storey did pull one back for PNE, but it was far too little, too late. North End played injury time against 10-men, with substitute Aidomo Emakhu sent off. The damage was well and truly done though and Heckingbottom was far from impressed by what he saw in the capital.
Post-match, he said: “We got what we deserved, really. We were really slow to start and Millwall imposed their style of play on us. Their first goal, we spoke a lot about their set-plays and their threat. You cannot always stop (Jake) Cooper heading the ball, but more often than not it will be the area he heads it down to, that is the danger. We spoke about that a lot, so to concede that goal was really poor on our part. But, it was coming. We’d had a few warnings; they had hit the bar.
“I felt that shook us into life a little bit and we had a couple of good moments after that. The second was a counter-attack from our set-play, so you go 2-0 down and it’s difficult - especially here, because Millwall can sit in and deny the space. We made the changes at half time and created a good chance, then 60 seconds later were are 3-0 down. Again, from being outcompeted - Joe Bryan steamed through our players. We probably got what we deserved, from the nature of the goals.
“It doesn’t matter how well you play. If you are outcompeted and outfought, you are not going to win football matches. You are just not going to and I felt, for 46 minutes, that was the case. It’s the first time I have been disappointed with us, that. We have had moments where we’ve had to dig in and we’ve done it really well. Today showed that when you don’t do it, especially away from home, what can happen. It is then an uphill task. Regardless of the things we did well after that, you are not going to do anything. If you start on the front foot, you give yourselves a great chances.”
Heckingbottom was keen for their to be no surprises for his side on the day. He felt the Lilywhites got the exact game he told the team was coming.
“100 per cent, yeah,” said Heckingbottom. “Millwall imposed their style on us. We had the ball a lot, to start with in the game, but didn’t trouble them or play in front of them too much. We didn’t inject enough tempo into it and Millwall did. They won too many first balls. There are going to be times when you cannot stop what they do, but you have to stand up to it. If they want to play direct, we compete with the first and second balls.
“That became a pattern, all of a sudden. They hit the bar, which was a warning. They had a couple of free-kicks, which were warnings. We then got stuck in that pattern of them imposing their game and we didn’t deal with it. There were no surprises. We knew what we were going to face - a really motivated, high energy Millwall team. We knew that. There were things I saw today which I won’t accept, definitely.”