Millwall head coach Alex Neil was full of praise for how striker Mihailo Ivanovic has adapted to the Sky Bet Championship after he struck another late winner for his side against Portsmouth.
Ivanovic is in his first season in English football after signing for the Lions from Vojvodina, in his native Serbia, last summer and the 20-year-old has developed a habit of making the difference when it really matters for Millwall.
His eight league goals this season have earned them 17 points and have given them an outside chance of making the play-offs, as they sit six points behind the top six.
His double in the 2-1 win at The Den ensured a third win of the campaign in all competitions for the south Londoners over Pompey, who are now just four points clear of the relegation zone.
Neil said: “Any 20-year-old that leads the line in the Championship and can get nearly [10 goals], and he’ll get double figures before the end of the season.
“If you do that, that’s an unbelievable season and it won’t be surprising me if people start talking about him.
“I’ve already seen something the other day talking about the top 10 young talents in Europe – he’s one of them.
“He’s 20 years of age, there are very few strikers at that age that will lead the line at this level and also score goals, so he deserves all the plaudits he gets.
“It was a particularly tight game today and I think physicality was the order of the day, hence the reason why I wasn’t making changes earlier because the players I was bringing on were all smaller.
“I didn’t want to take that risk, but I thought when they did come on, they impacted the game really well.”
Millwall led after 57 minutes of undistinguished football when George Honeyman’s corner was glanced in at the near post by Ivanovic.
Portsmouth captain Matt Ritchie almost equalised when his effort struck the outside of the post.
Pompey were level in the 80th minute as Josh Murphy’s shot was brilliantly blocked by Jake Cooper before Andre Dozzell was able to squeeze his follow-up in through a crowd of bodies.
But the Lions struck the decisive blow with three minutes left when Casper De Norre’s superb cross was headed into the bottom corner by Ivanovic.
Portsmouth boss John Mousinho said: “It feels like a bit of deja vu from a few weeks ago, to be honest.
“The performance at Preston was better, we didn’t play particularly well in the first half today – I thought we were a bit too predictable.
“We went long too early on without trying to get the extra pass and we started the second half a bit slowly as well.
“It wasn’t actually until we went a goal down that we started to play.
“We started to play with a bit of confidence, we started to get the ball forward and put Millwall under pressure.
“We should have scored before we got the equaliser and then it was a case of getting back into the game and throwing it away again.”
