Alex Neil says Ipswich still have ‘work to do’ to beat Millwall to promotion

Substitute Macauley Langstaff’s first goal since February cancelled out a Foxes opener from Harry Souttar, who was playing his first game since rupturing an Achilles 16 months ago.

It moved Alex Neil’s visitors up to second, a point ahead of Ipswich – but Town now have two games in hand as well as a superior goal difference.

Ipswich play at West Brom on Saturday and at Southampton, who also have a chance of automatic elevation, on Tuesday so Millwall must hope a top-two finish is still a possibility when they finish their season at home to Oxford next Saturday.

Millwall manager Neil said: “We are second at the moment, obviously the advantage is with Ipswich, they have a couple of games but there are still points to play for.

“We are on 80 points at the moment and we have a home game coming up. They’ve got work to do and I’m sure West Brom and Southampton will want to win, as will Oxford when they play us.

“Football is a strange game, isn’t it? We will see how Ipswich go but I’m a big believer in across the season whoever ends up second deserves to be there. If they manage to do it good luck to them – and it will be our task to attack the play-offs.

“There’s disappointment that we haven’t won the game. We were never in top-two contention at any point with anybody so these players have done magnificent.”

Langstaff struck in the 90th minute after Ryan Leonard set him up. Souttar bundled Leicester ahead in the 78th minute from Luke Thomas’ delivery to the back post.

Souttar might not have been on the pitch to score it had he been sent off for a first-half elbow into the face of Lions substitute Mihailo Ivanovic.

Neil added: “I haven’t seen it back but I know Harry, I had Harry as a player and I don’t think he is a dirty player by any means.

“If I see it back and think he has meant it I would be extremely surprised.”

Leicester will definitely be playing in a different division next season – their demotion to League One had been confirmed on Tuesday.

But manager Gary Rowett – who counts Millwall among his previous clubs – had at least seen his players put in a decent performance.

He said: “It was always gonna be a tough evening knowing that we’ve sealed our fate on Tuesday. There was a little bit of me wondering how we would respond and how we would perform.

“We spoke quite candidly about the need to be professional and to make sure that we did our jobs at the very least.”

The game was certainly special for Australia defender Souttar, who had been on the comeback trail since being hurt on Boxing Day 2024 when he was on loan at Sheffield United.

Rowett added: “He headed everything out of our box – and then the one opportunity gets in the other box, he attacks it like there’s only one person going to score and we’ve missed that.

“And for someone to give us that after being out for 450-odd days, it’s quite incredible for him to play 98 minutes. I had the medical and performance team almost begging me at 75 to take him off, but he just kept heading the next ball out.”

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