Neil Harris admitted it might have been best to make changes to his starting XI following today’s 2-0 home defeat against Southend.

The Lions went into the game with the same team which won 2-0 at Port Vale on Tuesday night, but were unable to collect a first three points of the season at The Den as goals either side of the break from David Mooney and Adam Barrett sealed the points for the Shrimpers.

That brought to an end Millwall’s three-game winning streak and the gaffer accepted with hindsight he should  have introduced some fresh faces after a busy couple of weeks for his young side.

Harris said: “I hold my hands up, maybe I should have mixed it up today.

“Maybe I should have put fresh legs out at the start.

“I’ve been working with the boys Monday-Wednesday-Friday and they said they were good so I wanted to reward good performances and keep a settled side, which I’ve been craving for.

“Today maybe it was a game too far for some of my players.”

Southend keeper Daniel Bentley made a string of fine saves for the visitors but Harris refused to use that as an excuse.

“I’m frustrated because we’ve lost another home game – that is my frustration,” the manager said.

“We weren’t excellent but we didn’t deserve to lose the game.

“They’ve got a top class goalkeeper that will grace the Premier League very soon and has won them a game of football but we didn’t reach the standards that we’ve set in the last two games.”

And despite going into the game full of belief their home hoodoo was finally over following the stoppage time winner against Peterborough in the JP Trophy, ultimately it was an all too familiar story as the Lions came off second best again in front of their own fans.

Harris said: “We’ve had a terrific week and were so much looking forward to coming back and playing here. I spoke about setting standards, high standards with good quality.

“I can’t fault the boys on effort, their spirit is terrific.

“Jordan Archer has not made a save the whole game and yet he has picked the ball out of the net twice because we made two mistakes.

“We switched off twice and that has cost us.

“As ever at The Den anything seems to end up in our net and going the other way our quality in the final third wasn’t as good as it has been.

“That was clear to see and certainly there is a frustration there.”

But Harris was at least pleased that sense of frustration didn’t extend to the fans who stuck with their side throughout.

He said: “I thought today the crowd were excellent, they came to support their team.

“I think they saw their team try to do everything that we want to achieve.

“They know it is not about a lack of effort. We got into good positions with the amount of crossing positions we got in, but we just lacked the final ball.

“I await to see the stats for the amount of crosses that went in the box.

“Yes, it was good defending by a resolute side but also do we throw ourselves at them, do we read where the ball is going?

“Are we proactive or reactive? Today I thought with a lot of front players I thought we were reactive.”