Preston North End's Freddie Woodman left frustrated after defeat to Millwall left them trailing Championship top six

The Lions only managed two shots on target in the contest but it was enough to give them an important three points in the race for the play-offs, Tom Bradshaw and Zian Flemming scoring in either half for Gary Rowett’s men.

It gives the London side a three point lead on the Lilywhites, with Millwall now five points clear in fifth – Coventry City, Blackburn Rovers and PNE behind in that order, all level on points.

Preston were in the ascendancy in the second half before a sucker punch of Flemming’s goal dashed their hopes of salvaging a result.

Woodman said: “Disappointing. It’s always a tough place to come and try and get points. I felt like we played well and could have picked up points on a different day. The second goal kills us, it kills momentum and we’re not in the game anymore. At 1-0 we’re still in the game and playing well but the second goal just killed us.

“Especially from a goalkeeping point of view, they’ve had two shots. Normally you come here and you’re up against it for 90 minutes but they’ve only had two shots. It utterly disappoints me, it disappoints all of us. But we’re still in and amonsgt it but we have to keep our heads up and go again on Wednesday.

Millwall have scored 24 times from set pieces so far this season, two of those coming against North End on Saturday. Their first initially came from a long throw in, with possession recycled and the ball crossed in from the left.

Their second came from a free kick into the box, where Jake Cooper nodded the ball down into the path of Flemming who had space to volley into the net.

Woodman knew that the Lions would pose a threat from set pieces and not dealing with them was a source of disappointment for the PNE no.1.

He said: “If you look at their goals this season, they’ve scored something like 50% of their goals from set pieces. We knew that coming in so that’s even more disappointing because we worked on trying to stop that. It’s really disappointing.

“We played some good stuff, if you look at the last few games we’ve played some good stuff. Kept the ball on the grass and created some opportunities. Listen, we’re going to have days where we can get it in the back of the net. You look at it and you look at the chances that we had it’s disappointing but these days happen, you can’t win every game.

“It hurts massively because it was a play-off game really. We’re hurting to be fair but we can’t be hurting for too long because have another game on Wednesday and we have to win it really.”