ALEX Neil said Millwall “found a way to lose the game” after they were beaten 2-1 by Portsmouth on the south coast.

The Lions took the lead within five minutes amid terrible conditions at Fratton Park after Pompey goalkeeper Nicolas Schmid passed the ball directly to Jenson Metcalfe, who calmly curled the ball into the bottom corner.

Pompey equalised ten minutes later when Lyndon Dykes turned a free kick into his own net, then, following a back-and-forth second half, scored a late winner through Thomas Waddingham. Ebou Adams had burst into the box, and after his initial effort was blocked, Jake Cooper’s attempted clearance flew off Waddingham’s foot and into the goal.

“We found a way to lose the game,” Neil said. “That’s what I thought.

“Throughout the game, we felt really comfortable. We started the game pretty well. Jenson got his goal, so that was good.

“I thought after we scored, we were a little bit passive for five minutes. They then got a free kick in the far corner, which wasn’t a foul in my opinion. We’ve got a man out to stop the ball coming into the front post. We don’t stop it; it goes into the front post. We managed to lose a runner, and then we ended up conceding.

“Second half, we started well. We were the better side. Looked as if we were pinning them in; had a little bit of melee with maybe three or four shots in one go to try and score.

“Then the wind picked up a little bit. The game became a little bit stretched. A few looked a little bit jaded, so I freshened it up and put Mihailo on, put Rom on, put Alfie on, just to try and give us a little bit more quality in the final third and see if we could unlock the door. We had little glimmers and little flashes, but not really enough.

“Then the second goal we concede is a ball off the front. We don’t pick up the second ball. We don’t match a runner into the box. We clear it off of somebody that lands to somebody else, and then the ball ends up in the back of the net. We find a way to lose the game. In the end, it makes it look even worse because we start kicking the ball off our own player, and it just looks messy from our point of view.”

Asked if the goals felt self-inflicted, Neil said: “If the opposition had a brilliant bit of play and a bit of quality, you’d go: ‘Well played.’ But certainly today it feels as if, and I said this to the lads afterwards, we’ve found a way to lose the game. That’s what it feels like.”