Alex Neil praised a “brilliant” goal from striker Mihailo Ivanovic which secured his first Championship win as Millwall manager, beating Luton 1-0 at Kenilworth Road.
The Serbia international fired home a wonderful strike from the edge of the box on the hour mark, an effort that lit up a contest woefully short on quality.
The result leaves Luton in real danger of a second successive relegation.
Neil, whose previous four matches had seen him take just two points, said: “I thought we played some really good football at times.
“Naturally it’s going to be a bit scrappy, obviously coming to Kenilworth Road is always difficult, but I thought the players were sensational, the performances across the pitch were excellent.
“We lost our goalkeeper, lost our left winger, we’re already light in numbers, so for the lads to do what they did today speaks volumes of the character and togetherness of the squad.
“The performance itself, the victory, the manner of how we did it, we had to dig in, you’ve got to make sure you win the battles and we did that.
“I think strikers feed off confidence and chances. He’s (Ivanovic) not started loads of games this season, he’s been much more prominent recently.
“He’s scored a few goals, scored in the cup, missed a few chances in the cup, scored a great goal today, had another great chance later on, so as a centre forward you can’t ask for much more than that.
“It’s a tough gig here, he had to lead the line, battle with two centre backs but when that chance presents itself that’s what you’re here to do and his quality was brilliant.”
Neither side created anything of note in the opening half an hour until a penalty in the 33rd minute.
Aaron Connolly was tripped by Marvelous Nakamba, who picked himself up to take the penalty but was denied by Thomas Kaminski.
After the break, Carlton Morris put in a towering leap but his header went inches wide.
Duncan Watmore also flashed narrowly wide, before Ivanovic’s curving volley gave Kaminski no chance at all.
Town boss Matt Bloomfield said: “I thought we did some good stuff in the first two games this week but the third one wasn’t the level that we needed.
“We looked a bit leggy at times, didn’t have the same energy, zip and intensity about us.
“I think a few of the boys were playing their third game in a week for quite a while, maybe that showed.
“We made four changes, possibly in hindsight we could have made a few more, but we didn’t have the energy that we needed.
“It was a stop-start game, it wasn’t a huge footballing spectacle I don’t think, it was a game of set-pieces and we didn’t quite come out with enough second balls and start to build momentum and keep the ball on the pitch.
“It was too stop-start and ended up being a scrappy affair and it was always probably going to be one goal that made the difference.”
