Preston North End manager Alex Neil accepts his share of blame for defeat to Millwall

The Lilywhites were beaten 1-0 at Deepdale, Shaun Hutchinson's 78th minute header settling the contest in favour of the South London side who completed a league double over Neil's men.

North End boss Neil felt the effort was there from his players even if their play fell short of recent performances.

And he took responsibility himself for substitutions which didn't have the impact desired.

Neil said: "Sometimes we need to take stock of where we are. Who are we trying to kid?

"We are sitting sixth in the league, the boys have done remarkably well, it is absolutely remarkable to be in the position we are.

"I will get extremely frustrated with people who are going to level criticism at them, they gave it their best shot.

"I made a couple of decisions today which didn't work, I will take my responsibility for that.

"These lads never shy away from responsibility, they leave everything on the pitch.

"Did we play well today? No we didn't at times. That will happen."

PNE were the better side early on with good chances for Tom Barkhuizen and Daniel Johnson, before Millwall got a foothold and got stronger as the game went on.

Their winner came when a looping header from Murray Wallace after a corner had been cleared, dropped over the Preston defence and Hutchinson ran in to score.

Neil said: "In the first 25 minutes we started really brightly, I thought we should have had a penalty when Tommy B drives into the box and the lad clips his heels.

"He went over and there was no reason if he wasn't clipped to go over because he was in control of the ball.

"We had two or three good chances, Tommy B had a couple of shots when he skewed them past the post.

"Then he set up DJ. If you look at his Wigan goal and goals before that, he just slots them in the corner.

"He went too high and too straight to the keeper. Nuge then had a chance from the rebound and put it over the bar.

"For the 15 minutes leading into half-time I thought Millwall came into it a bit more.

"Our sloppiness led to their good 15 minutes, we played a few square balls and they hunted us a bit more.

"In the first 15 minutes of the second half the only difference was Millwall picked up a couple more loose balls in the middle than us.

"But we didn't really look threatening, we struggled to get up the pitch.

"I made two aggressive substitutions to get our foot on the ball, get us the pitch to try and control the game.

"We never really got hold of the ball enough and Nuge started to tire.

"In the first half he had been working their centre-backs, getting across and making them play forward.

"They started to open the pitch up more and we couldn't get to the ball. Then I needed to put energy up there to force Millwall to play longer again.

"It didn't really work if I'm being brutally honest.

"We struggled to influence the game for the last 30 minutes and Milwall had some good chances off that.

"For their goal it was a second phase from a set play, we headed it out and I think it was Tommy B who was just lagging behind a bit and didn't clear his space.

"They ended up scoring a goal."