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Neil Harris: ‘Being a Millwall manager who defies the odds is wonderful’ | Ed Aarons
Ed Aarons
Neil Harris’s team continue their push for promotion to the Premier League at home to Fulham on Friday. ‘I keep saying there is no pressure on us but of course there is,’ he says. Photograph: Tom Jenkins for the Guardian
The club’s former striker has drawn on a ‘siege mentality’ and underdog spirit to mastermind a surprise challenge for a Championship play-off place
‘Only once has it crossed my mind,†says Neil Harris with half a smile. “I was so scared I just stopped thinking about it.†Yet before Millwall’s biggest match for several years, their manager has every reason to dream big.
The meeting with Fulham at a sold-out Den on Friday will pit together the Championship’s two form sides, having recorded a combined 38 league matches unbeaten as the race for a place in the top flight hots up.
Whereas it is no surprise to see Slavisa Jokanovic’s side, Middlesbrough and Aston Villa – whom Millwall face in their final three league fixtures – occupying three of the play-off spots, the presence of a club whose transfer record remains the £800,000 spent on Paul Goddard from Derby nearly 30 years ago is almost unbelievable.
“My new phrase is the league table doesn’t lie after 43 games – you are where you deserve to be,†says Harris, who has just celebrated three years in charge having been appointed as the caretaker manager in March 2015. “Traditionally we’ve been a second-half-of-the-season team and we’ve seen that again this time. The boys are absolutely loving it at the moment.â€
Defeat at Norwich on New Year’s Day left Millwall in 15th place and six points clear of the relegation zone but events since have been extraordinary. Eleven victories and six draws have catapulted them above sides with much larger budgets, with supporters dreaming of a return to the top flight for the first time since the team featuring Tony Cascarino and Teddy Sheringham in attack were relegated in 1990 having briefly been top the previous September.
“I saw Cas last night – he was loving it,†says Harris. “It brings back good memories for a lot of people connected to the club and I think they all want to be a part of it. The Den is an awesome place when it’s sold out and the fans get behind the team. Talk about hostile atmospheres – it is! The noise and the togetherness - the fans feed off it. It took us well over a year after I took the job for the players to feel that. Now they get it every week.â€
If anyone would know about that then it is Harris. Born and raised in Essex, where he still lives, he started his career at non-league Maldon Town as a teenager before joining Cambridge City in 1996. Two years later he signed for Millwall. He was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 2001 but was back in action within months. Having been in the side who reached the FA Cup final in 2004, losing against Manchester United, Harris departed that summer on loan before joining Nottingham Forest. He returned in 2007 and broke Sheringham’s club goalscoring record before moving to Southend in 2011 and retiring in 2013.
Millwall, here celebrating the equaliser by Steve Morison, right, in last Saturday’s 1-1 draw at Sheffield United, have not lost in the league since New Year’s Day. Photograph: Paul Burrows/Action Images
“We’ve been through quite a lot with this club,†says Harris, who guided the team out of League One last season via the play-offs. “First and foremost the Millwall fans love a non-league player. They love an underdog – all they want to see on a pitch is themselves; someone who is ready to run through a brick wall because that’s what they would do for their club..â€
Never more has that togetherness been illustrated than in the response to Lewisham council’s plan to seek a compulsory purchase of land leased by Millwall around The Den. “A lot has been made of the way our council was trying to sell us down the river and rightly so,†Harris says. “It’s hugely disappointing as a manager but we have a strong chairman and a strong fanbase with a lot of people who support us. It is the heart of the community in a deprived area and the community needs the football ground.
“When it riled the fans, they got behind the team and I think that has helped create that siege mentality. Those advantages that we haven’t got – and there’s hundreds of them in this division – we have to play on the fact that we’re a proud club that everyone loves to hate. Being a Millwall manager who defies the odds is a wonderful feeling.â€
Should they do the unthinkable and reach the Premier League for the first time, Harris will certainly have done that. But as he is at pains to point out, it is a very much a group effort from him and his staff, including his assistant and former team-mate, David Livermore. “You have to have the spirit behind the spirit. We’re all quite young and I think that helps with the players.â€
The other teams have a bit more to lose – that’s not me playing mind games, that’s just being realistic
That extends to the club’s scouting department where the 25-year-old head of recruitment, Alex Aldridge, works closely with the 60-something former Barnet and Reading manager Terry Bullivant. Remarkably in the age of multimillion-pound fees, several of the squad who have performed so well were signed on free transfers at the start of the season, and Millwall also benefited from the addition of three players from Wolves. The winger Ben Marshall – a former England Under‑21 international – arrived on loan in January and midfielders Jed Wallace and George Saville, who has scored 10 league goals this season, were secured for less than a combined £1m.
“We knew we wanted to buy George because he had been on loan with us the year before and he is a winner who is an excellent footballer,†Harris says. “Alex is a very young, methodical and forward-thinking guy and Bulli is the old boy in the back with the flask and the sandwiches who can spot a player from anywhere inside the M25.â€
Harris, who started coaching Millwall’s Under-21 side, also reels off the statistic that he has given first-team debuts to 14 youth‑team players in the past two years, including Aiden O’Brien, Fred Onyedinma and Mahlon Romeo, whose father is Jazzie B of Soul II Soul fame. Only the signing of Tim Cahill, who returned to The Den in January on a short-term contract having spent his formative years playing alongside Harris, has yet to pay dividends on the pitch, although his manager says the presence of Australia’s record scorer at the club has given everybody a lift.
“I keep saying there is no pressure on us but of course there is,†Harris says. “But the other teams have a bit more to lose – that’s not me playing mind games, that’s just being realistic. There is expectation on them with the money that they have spent but we will approach the game with no fear and everything to gain. I’m this relaxed when I say it to the players that they relax. They have earned the right to be here.â€