Jed Wallace spot kick just enough for Millwall to edge out Bristol City

Millwall (0) 1 Jed Wallace 64 pen

Bristol City (0) 0

Jed Wallace came off the bench to slam home the penalty which gave Millwall their second win of the season.

Wallace had been on just a couple of minutes, but was entrusted with the spot-kick after Benik Afobe had been baulked by City defender Rob Atkinson as the pair chased a through ball from George Saville.

His kick was perfectly placed - high and to the left of a wrong-footed Dan Bentley - for his fourth goal of the campaign.

The goal came against the run of play as the visitors had been pinning them back since the change of ends and were starting to look dangerous.

But the goal galvanised the Lions and livened up a quiet Den. After that, the visitors were comfortably kept at arm’s length.

Millwall continue to operate in the glass-half-full world of ambiguous stats.

They had only one win to their name in the league before tonight but a run of four draws after that solitary victory at home to Blackpool meant they were on an unbeaten run of sorts.

Another way of looking at it is they had failed to win in six September games when they were also knocked out of the Carabao Cup by Leicester City.

This win puts them back in credit.

There was much to commend in Millwall’s early efforts, with Scott Malone probing down the left and Sheyi Ojo drifting into pockets of space behind the front two.

The visitors were forced to do a lot of defending as former Robins strikers Afobe and Matt Smith prowled menacingly.

Bristol City were happy to absorb and rely on fast breaks. In one of those, a hopeful final punt eluded the Lions’ back line and Bartosz Bialkowski had to race from his line to smother Andreas Weimann.

The Austrian also drifted to the back post to nod a Jay Dasilva cross just wide in another clear warning about the dangers of sucker punches.

Afobe really should have opened the scoring just past the half hour mark, soon after City had lost a defender, Nathan Baker, to injury.

He ghosted in behind a clutch of City players for a clear opening, only for the agile Bentley to deny him from close range.

And the big striker was so nearly on the mark just before the break when he got on the end of George Evans’ cross, only to once again see Bentley springing into view to tip away a firm downward header.

Bently was beaten from the spot but kept his side in it by getting down low with a strong left arm to stop a strike from sub Billy Mitchell finding the bottom corner.

Lions: (3-4-1-2) Bialkowski – Ballard, Hutchinson, M Wallace – McNamara, Evans, Saville, Malone (Cooper 85) – Ojo (Mitchell 73) Afobe, Smith (J Wallace 60). Subs not used: Long, Kieftenbeld, Bradshaw, Leonard

Robins: (3-5-2) Bentley – Kalas, Atkinson, Baker (Pring 31) – Tanner, James, Bakinson, Williams (Palmer 69), Dasilva (O’Dowda 55) – Weimann, Martin. Subs not used: O’Leary, Simpson, King, Wells, Scott