Millwall are battling for control of The Den but Neil Harris’s team just struggle to win there

LIFE BEYOND THE PREMIER LEAGUE: Millwall are battling for control of The Den but Harris’s team just struggle to win there

Millwall manager Neil Harris scored a record 138 goals for the club getty (Getty Images)

The spotlight in League One this week has fallen on Millwall’s attempts to stop land around The Den falling into the hands of a property developer, a move which chairman John Berylson says would “threaten the club’s very survival”.

It is a fight supported by more than 16,000 signatories to a “Defend Our Den” online petition and it is a fight that will continue following Lewisham Council’s decision on Wednesday to defer a ruling on the sale of the land, but for Millwall manager Neil Harris there is a different challenge regarding The Den.

As Millwall’s 138-goal record scorer, he heard the roar of this famously intimidating south-east London outpost many times, yet it has been a quieter place of late. Millwall may sit in the League One play-off places but Tuesday’s defeat by Scunthorpe United was their seventh in 15 league matches at The Den and the hangover from a couple of poor recent home campaigns lingers.

“At home, we’ve not been successful over a period of time and it is trying to change that mentality of the players, the club and the fan base,” says the 38-year-old of a team who won just five of 23 home games last season. “Away from home we’ve been defensively aggressive, with a really good shape, whereas at home we’ve not used the ball as well.

“I want my players to be successful and I want my players, first and foremost, to experience The Den with 18,000 in,” Harris adds. “I want them to experience that, because there is no better place to play your football than when it is rocking and it is full and I look forward to the day it happens.”

It is the biggest conundrum for a young manager, who replaced Ian Holloway at the Millwall helm last March – taking the job on full time six weeks later, despite their relegation from the Championship. Harris, who had coached the club’s under-21s previously, admits he did wonder about the potential impact on his status as a club legend. “You think: ‘Am I going to be a failure? Is it going to be tarnished?’ How I tried to look at it, methodically, is that I had a successful playing career and that will never change. I will now be judged as a manager. I try to separate the two. It is a privilege to manage a club I had such a great affinity with as a player.”

It is a relationship that spanned two periods as a player, from 1998-2004 and then from 2007-11; the fact that he faced testicular cancer during that first spell strengthened the bond. “It was a difficult time of my life,” he recalls, “and it made me a stronger character and a better person and I believe it made my relationship with the football club and the fan base even stronger.” Today Harris uses two people from Millwall’s recent past as sounding boards – his old manager Kenny Jackett, now at Wolverhampton Wanderers, and former team-mate Sean Dyche – and, as he notes, his preferred 4-4-2 set-up is not unlike Dyche’s Burnley formation. As for Millwall’s future, he has purposely put his faith in young players like forward Aiden O’Brien, centre-back Sid Nelson and winger Fred Onyedinma.

“We tried to reduce the squad, and budget, and we tried most importantly to throw in homegrown players. When I first came to the club, just before the turn of the new millennium, we brought through a lot of players – myself, Tim Cahill, Steven Reid, Paul Ifill – and we built on that, but it doesn’t happen overnight. Having been under-21s manager and seen the quality of player in our academy, I wanted to boost our first-team squad with homegrown players.”

Another player currently catching the eye is 18-goal Lee Gregory, signed by Holloway from non-league FC Halifax Town, where he played alongside Jamie Vardy. Harris believes Gregory can play at a higher level. “He has come into the game late and he is full of enthusiasm and wants to learn.”

The same applies to Harris himself, who admits he is still learning to cope with losing as a manager. “Going to bed at night is difficult after a defeat, I must admit, but I was like that as a player.” A home victory against Peterborough United tomorrow would help provide a better night’s sleep – and a step towards hearing the The Den roar once more.