How Millwall have become the Championship's dark horses for promotion under Alex Neil

Top billing went to Coventry and Middlesbrough at the start of the week ahead of their heavyweight Championship clash. And the titanic tussle didn't disappoint.

Frank Lampard's men streaked their way clear at the summit before being reeled back in by Boro and Kim Hellberg, who headed into Monday night's clash as the form team. Coventry's eulogies were already being written after blowing a 10-point advantage as Boro hit new levels of consistency, so, naturally, they came out on top. Championship heritage.

We should know by now that when it comes to unpredictability, excitement and the downright ridiculous, nothing rivals this division. And yet even by the Championship's weird and wonderful standards, seeing Millwall lead the charge behind the much fancied top two heading into the spring feels almost surreal.

But the diligent south Londoners sit third in the standings on merit and have the Premier League firmly in their sights.

Since returning to the Championship in 2017, Millwall have established themselves as perennial play-off challengers, albeit without ever obtruding that glass ceiling of the top-six.

But under the impressive Alex Neil, Millwall look a good bet to reach the play-offs at this level for the first time in over 20 years.

Their last two results, wins away at play-off rivals Wrexham and then the doomed Sheffield Wednesday, are telling for different reasons. While the 2-0 win over Wrexham put their rivals on notice, games like the one last week against the Owls, who are winless since September and hadn't scored since Boxing Day, are the ones Millwall fans are accustomed to seeing their team come unstuck in. But not this time.

The team Neil has assembled mirrors the impressive Scot; they quietly but effectively gone about their business this season. Only Frank Lampard (30) has notched up more Championship wins than the 27 Neil has to his name since taking charge of Millwall for the first time on January 1 last year.

That period has not only seen Neil rehabilitate his own reputation following a turbulent period at Stoke, but it has also propelled Millwall into unchartered territory, with the Lions boasting more points than ever before at this stage of the season in the Championship era.

Despite their reputation for being imperious at home, it's actually Millwall's away form which has given them the platform to launch an assault on the automatic promotion spots.

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The Lions currently have the fourth best record in the division having collected 26 points on their travels; just four fewer than the tally they have accrued at The Den. It is also the same total they amassed on the road in the entirety of the 2024-25 campaign, while they managed just one point more the season prior. Neil has turned them into top travellers - something they have never really been in their current second tier run.

On home turf, the unique power of The Den is something Neil has learned to channel. Others, barring a club legend in Harris, have been unable to fully embrace the chaos that a full house in Bermondsey brings and transform it into results.

With Millwall losing three of their opening four home league games with an aggregate score of 1-9, alarm bells were ringing briefly. But Neil and his team have found their groove, losing just once at home since.

Perhaps more importantly, the stage fright which has plagued Millwall in recent years when playing in front of sell-out crowds has also been erased, emphasised by the 4-0 routing of Charlton Athletic in front of the stadium's highest ever league attendance last month.

Stylistically there has been an evolution. With set-pieces and athleticism enjoying a renaissance in the game, Millwall's strengths in seasons gone by are now looked upon more favourably. But they have more strings to their bow these days. They can be direct but effective, dangerous in transition and capable of producing good fluid football.

Femi Azeez, one of the division's best attackers, is the team's figurehead. He has flourished under Neil's tutelage, becoming Millwall's talisman in what is his first full season in the Championship. He enters the final knockings of the campaign with seven goals and four assists from the right wing and looks every inch a Premier League player in all but name.

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Though comfortably the lowest scorers in the top-six, Millwall have traditionally been one of the division's most formidable defensive teams. And after expanding their style in a bid to plunder the numbers in front of goal required to yield promotion, Millwall's rearguard have managed to grow into an astute source of goals to supplement the work done by Azeez and others at the top end of the pitch.

Between Millwall's first-choice back four of Alfie Doughty, captain Jake Cooper, Caleb Taylor and Tristan Crama - a revelation at right-back - they have accrued 17 goal contributions between them this term: almost half of Millwall's total tally of 41 goals.

Evolution on the pitch has been enabled by James Berylson, who continues to be the antithesis of the modern football club owner. Budgets have grown but are still dwarfed by rivals, particularly those aided by the riches of parachute payments. With his backing, Millwall have gone from one of the most predictable Championship clubs in the transfer market to one of the most exciting, making record-breaking outlays in successive windows.

In January, Millwall added the two players who made the most significant impact in Sunderland's play-off final triumph at Wembley last year in Anthony Patterson and Tommy Watson. Barry Bannan was also added to a team which overcame a crippling injury crisis at the turn of the year, leaving Neil with no recognised midfielders for a handful of games. Even that was not enough to derail this Millwall team, whose resilience has increased tenfold since wilting away at Birmingham and Portsmouth in successive away games in November.

The big question is whether or not those additions, coupled with the return of other key figures such as Billy Mitchell and Josh Coburn, will make the difference when it matters.

Like a championship boxer, Millwall traditionally build up a head of steam and let their hands go in the second half of campaigns to gatecrash the top-six, only to then run out of gas in the championship rounds.

The ghosts of the final day of the 2022-23 campaign, where Millwall capitulated against Blackburn Rovers after heading in at the break 3-1 up, haunted them well into the following campaign. It felt like a trauma that Rowett and his team never truly recovered from.

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The difference this time around is there is no ground to make up; Millwall have assembled an eight-point buffer over the pack chasing the top-six and can afford to have one eye on Coventry and Middlesbrough rather than looking pensively over their shoulder, though Ipswich Town and Hull City do have games in hand on them.

With Millwall in unchartered territory, question marks over whether they have the firepower to chase down the top two are not without merit given they are underperforming their XG by -3.73. Their shot conversion rate also scores lower, standing at 9.76 per cent.

They are, though, on course to comfortably nail down a play-off place. And perhaps most crucially, Millwall have nothing to fear in the run-in. They went toe-to-toe with Coventry at the CBS Arena last month and were unfortunate to leave empty-handed.

That game is the only one they have lost since Christmas and with fixtures against Hull, Ipswich and Middlesbrough to come before May, they will decide their own destiny.

After slipping under the radar up until now, a new challenge lies ahead with more and more eyes likely to be on Millwall at the business end of the season. While that level of scrutiny may be a new experience for the team, crucially, Neil has been here before.

Nobody at Millwall will be taking anything for granted after the chastening experiences of three years ago, even if the landscape at The Den has changed significantly since then.

But as the 40th anniversary of Millwall's solitary promotion to England's top division looms, there is a growing belief that this year could be another special one.

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