Another very warm evening, ideal for watching football with a beer in your hand. Unfortunately EFL rules don’t allow it, and anyway you can’t get a beer if you are in the NRE!
No programmes, so only 50/50 draw tickets to sell, payment only by card/phone. Still plenty of people coming in at the Cut Throat Lane turnstiles who didn’t know the Abbey is cash free. A couple of Mansfield fans bought tickets, they were on a day trip to Cambridge and decided to come to the match. I hoped they enjoyed the game.
Lots of team changes from Saturday, but we have a good squad with options in every position.
The Millwall players looked pretty sharp, lots of quick turns and short passes, but not much progress until they went long, and too often managed to put the ball out. The other surprising difference was their physicality, with lots of pushing and shoving all over the pitch.
Not much in the way of goalmouth chances in the first half, the second half saw a Millwall break end with a shot into the side netting, but 8 minutes into the second half saw some U’s good passing around the Millwall penalty area before Lankester laid the ball back for McNeil to shoot into the corner of the goal with the keeper unsighted and even if he had seen the shot it would probably have been out of reach.
Shilow had shown some pace with Honeyman being booked in the first half for pulling him back when trying to break away, and a U’s attack was halted when Lankester was pulled back again by Honeyman for a second yellow card, so Millwall played the lasty half hour with 10 men.
A flurry of substitutions upset the U’s rhythm which allowed Millwall to exert some pressure, and they were almost gifted an equaliser when a pass from Okadina to Rossi was miss controlled (or it could have been meant for Mannion but hit Rossi) and fell for a Millwall player to have a free run to goal, but Mannion saved the shot.
A break from the pressure towards the end of the game as Lankester charged forward, played in Brophy who squared for the unmarked Smith to shoot over from 12 yards as the keeper charged out. If Smith had left the ball we had another player free who would have had a tap-in!
The stats showed even possession, with Millwall having 15 shots with only 1 on target, and U’s had half as many shots but got 2 on target.
Another all round good team performance. Our players didn’t react badly to the physical battles Millwall gave away 19 free kicks to our 9!), and passed the ball nicely even if we didn’t trouble their keeper too often. Special mention to Greg Taylor, his first full game since his injury a year ago.
Terry Wilby