Millwall 2 Doncaster Rovers 0: It was a “free win” for Lions, raps Ferguson

But Millwall manager Neil Harris was full of praise for Steve Morison after the striker scored twice in a 2-0 victory over Rovers.

The 32-year-old scored two quickfire goals in the first eight minutes and that proved enough to rack up a fifth game unbeaten for the home side.

Morison could have had a hat-trick but fired wide on the half-hour from six yards, but Harris refused to blame his match-winner.

“I’m delighted with the clean sheet and Morison’s two goals,” he said. “He’s played better than that and not scored before and I’m disappointed that we haven’t given him the match ball.

“We can play better than that, although we’ve played better and not had the points so I’ll take that.

“Steve was brilliant. I hope he scores twice and misses four or five every week.

“He consistently gives us an outlet. He never stops. We worked on the free-kick for his second goal this afternoon.

“It should have been over at 15 minutes, and certainly at half an hour. I thought we defended our box really well. We worked on that during the break and I’m delighted with the clean sheet.

“Other teams come here to play a possession system and frustrate us, but they’ve seen that we don’t get frustrated because we’ve got that quality, especially in the final third. With a bit more concentration, we could have had four or five.

“I think we took our foot off the pedal after eight minutes and we didn’t hit our standards that we’ve set in recent weeks. I didn’t like what we did between then and half-time and I told them that.”

Morison’s opener after five minutes came when he reacted quickest to a poor pass in the Rovers defence and slipped the ball past goalkeeper Thorsten Stuckmann.

And just moments later he was celebrating another as he powerfully volleyed home Shane Ferguson’s deep free-kick - and visiting manager Darren Ferguson admitted his side left themselves too much to do after a poor start.

“Tonight, we’ve given Millwall a bit of a free win really,” Ferguson said.

“I have never seen anything like the first goal, and it came from our most experienced player (Stuckmann).

“We wanted to play common sense football but unfortunately we moved it around a little too well and never really managed to frustrate them.

“Our final ball needs to be better. We’re trying to get players in at the moment, especially defenders.

“The fans were great and stuck with us throughout, but I know they need to have positive football and positive results, and that will come when our final ball is better.”