Millwall head coach Alex Neil hailed the “resilience of the group” after they recovered from missing a late penalty to score a stoppage-time winner at Derby.
Josh Coburn saw his spot-kick saved but then netted in the fifth minute of eight added on to snatch a win that keeps the Lions’ play-off challenge on track.
There had been few chances and little quality in the game until Coburn made amends at the death, scoring the rebound after goalkeeper Jacob Widell Zetterstrom had saved from George Saville.
Neil said: “I thought it was no more than we deserved. I thought with 10 minutes to go we were the team pushing to try and get the goal.
“What I think it does show is the resilience of the group. The moment’s gone (the penalty), don’t feel sorry for yourself, get on with the next action and we did.
“The ball landed to Josh, he tucked it away and it’s a good moment for him, he deserved his goal.
“We always knew it was going to be a tough match. It was John’s (Eustace) first home game and given where Derby are in the league, we knew we had to go about our work to try and win the game.
“The discussion point before the game was don’t let this season drift. We’re at that stage where you look at the fixtures and think ‘that’s a big one’ and we don’t want to be any different.
“The last thing we want is for people to be looking at our games and thinking ‘that’s a dead rubber’.
“So for us we want to be in contention and make sure there’s something for us to fight for and the only way to do that is to win more points, so that in itself was huge motivation for us.”
Derby head coach John Eustace said: “I’m really disappointed to lose the game, I didn’t think we deserved to lose, although we probably didn’t do enough to win the game either.
“We were up against a very difficult team in Millwall who haven’t lost many games out of the last 10 or 11 so we knew it was going to be tough, but I was happy with the attitude of the boys.
“You can see the areas where we need to improve and that just comes from hard work on the training pitch.
“We have to improve in the final third, it’s very evident where we need to improve and all we can do is keep working with the boys and see where it takes us.”
