Plymouth boss Miron Muslic was proud of how his side dealt with the high of beating Liverpool as they returned to Championship action in style.
FA Cup hero Ryan Hardie bagged a brace as Argyle thrashed Millwall 5-1 just days after knocking the Premier League leaders out of the cup and booking a fifth-round tie at Manchester City.
Mustapha Bundu and Nikola Katic also struck after Joe Bryan’s early own goal started the scoring and Muslic was ecstatic with his side’s response.
“I knew it was going to be very difficult for us because everything was so emotional on Sunday,” the Plymouth boss said.
“I think we – as staff – found the right balance to support the lads as best possible to enjoy this great achievement, a historical moment for us, but also on the other side not to forget that the daily bread is this competition and we have to collect points and we have to win games.
“That’s why I’m very pleased and very proud also of tonight’s performance and the win.
“The plan was to use this energy, to use this confidence from Liverpool from the first whistle tonight – if we could manage to do this we knew then that we can also create some troubled moments for Millwall knowing that Millwall is just defensively solid, five clean sheets over the last six games.
“We knew if we could put this structure back on the pitch, this intensity, we can create chances and we took advantage of it.
“We have been working on this new structure for the past three weeks and we are also getting solid and that’s also very important in our situation.
“We have to work hard, very hard all the time. Remember it was only three weeks ago we lost 5-0 to Burnley here.
“Coming off the bottom is a signal, we have something else to build on.”
Bryan scored a late consolation goal for Millwall, whose five-match unbeaten run ended abruptly.
Lions boss Alex Neil said: “I am bitterly disappointed. It couldn’t have gone much worse for us to be honest.
“The goals we conceded, I didn’t think Plymouth needed to do much to score.
“The first one we put in the net ourselves, the second one is a penalty which I didn’t feel was a penalty. The third one was a header and we don’t deal with the second ball. The fourth one we made a bad back pass and we put them through. It was basically a catalogue of errors throughout the match.
“If you look back at the last decade since I have been in the Championship, it is very rare that my team ever lose five goals. So that for me is bitterly disappointing as it is for the players.
“It is three points gone and we need to focus on what the next game looks like.”
