Chris Peddy, BBC Sport England, London & South East<\/p>\n
Eleven minutes into the final game of last season, Millwall were sitting pretty in the top six with a 1-0 lead away at already-promoted Burnley thanks to Mihailo Ivanovic’s early goal.<\/p>\n
But Josh Brownhill’s equaliser just two minutes later set the Clarets on the way to a 3-1 win, which resulted in the Lions finishing eighth in the table and two points off the play-off spots, having started the day just outside the top six on goal difference.<\/p>\n
Two seasons before they were even closer, shut out by a single point under Gary Rowett – having come ninth the year prior to that.<\/p>\n
This term, under Alex Neil, the chance to go not just one better, but several places more than that, is firmly within their grasp.<\/p>\n
Having spent much of the season in the hunt for automatic promotion, Millwall sit fourth on 69 points, two behind second-placed Middlesbrough, with seven games remaining.<\/p>\n
Win at Boro in Friday’s lunchtime kick-off and they will jump up to second before Ipswich Town play on Monday, although the Tractor Boys would have two games in hand.<\/p>\n
After their trip to the Riverside, the run-in looks agreeable for Neil and his side.<\/p>\n
Just two sides, Norwich City (10th) and Queens Park Rangers (12th) of the six they will face are currently in the top half, and they welcome both to The Den.<\/p>\n
They will close out the season against relegation-battling Leicester City (away) before hosting Oxford United at home on the last day.<\/p>\n
Millwall face a big challenge to secure a top-two finish against clubs who have both been there and done it recently, as well as having scored more and conceded less goals this season.<\/p>\n
But a place in the top six and chance to get to Wembley has become a genuine expectation rather than hope.<\/p>\n
Two seasons ago under Neil Harris, Millwall were outsiders for the play-offs on that day up at Turf Moor, they would love to have it sewn up by the time Oxford visit south east London on 2 May.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chris Peddy, BBC Sport England, London & South East Eleven minutes into the final game of last season,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360810,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":{"0":"post-360809","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-newzealand","10":"tag-nz","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}