Hull City 4 Millwall 1: Bruce wants more from Tigers

The Tigers cruised to a 4-0 half-time lead with the help of three goals in eight minutes.

Jay Simpson, Abdoulaye Faye and Sone Aluko struck in the closing stages of the half to put the game beyond the visitors after Robert Koren had fired the Tigers ahead in the 14th minute.

But Bruce was unhappy his side took their feet off the gas after the break.

Striker Darius Henderson grabbed a consolation goal for Millwall midway through the second half.

Bruce said: “The first half was terrific, we played some really good football.

“I think most teams would have struggled to play against us when we perform like that.

“But the human brain is a funny thing when something gets too easy and that’s what we saw in the second half.

“If I’m going to be critical, the second half was exactly the opposite of what we wanted but, overall, I’m delighted with the win.

“We just came off the gas a little bit and, even when we went forward, we weren’t as sharp. If we were, we could have scored five or six.”

The win maintained Bruce’s perfect home record in the league with Hull.

He said: “It’s the best half I’ve seen from us this season. We’ve had a decent start with three wins out of three at home.

“There’s just 41 games and nine months to go now.”

Millwall manager Kenny Jackett opted to match the Tigers’ 3-5-2 shape and it went horribly wrong.

He said: “We tried to match up and get tighter to their midfielders.

“Maybe we should have gone to 4-4-2 sooner, but we were breaking quite well and getting the ball to our forwards’ feet but our final ball wasn’t good enough.

“When Hull were breaking, they were hitting the target with their shots.

“We did try to attack them but, unfortunately, that can sometimes work against you.

“Hull played with a lot of tempo and it was hard for us to stop them moving the ball and getting into good shooting opportunities.

“We wanted to get tighter to Koren, who scored the first goal, because if you give him shooting opportunities, even from distance, he can score. He’s proved that over a number of seasons.”

The Tigers were dominant from the off and could have been 2-0 up by the time Koren had put them ahead in the 14th minute.

The Slovenian’s strike, right-footed from 20 yards, left Millwall goalkeeper Maik Taylor rooted to the spot.

The visitors showed little sign of responding and a devastating spell from City in the closing stages of the first half put the game beyond them.

Simpson made it 2-0 in the 32nd minute, expertly cushioning Stephen Quinn’s cross before stroking the ball beyond Taylor from six yards for his third goal of the season.

Four minutes later, it was 3-0 when James Chester clipped in a cross for fellow centre-back Faye to power home with a header.

And Aluko made it 4-0 in the 40th minute, smashing the ball under Taylor.

Millwall improved slightly after reverting to 4-4-2 and pulled their goal back in the 64th minute when Henderson steered home a back-post header from Alan Dunne’s deep cross.