As ever there was plenty of bravado from our dear friends from south-east London, but it was Leeds who provided the quality, and by the end the Millwall fans were leaving in their droves. Apart from the comedy section, of course.
And once Leeds have overcome a difficult start to blow the home side away with the quality of our attacking play, Daniel Farke was understandably chipper at the press conference. "I'm proud of my guys today because I've played here several times at The Den, I know it's an unbelievably tough place to go and you have to be on it”.
"You have to be there with a pretty complex performance. I know we as a club have also waited, I think more than a decade, to leave here with three points. You have to be spot on, this is what we did today because there were periods of the game when you have to show some steel and resilience.”
"For me the most important topic is to return back from such a tough place with a clean sheet for the dressing room and yes, to score three goals it's amazing. When I think about the first goal you can put it straightaway into a book and sell it, because it's so wonderful. I'm pretty pleased for this. I’m pretty, pretty proud of the performance.”
And although he was keen to stress that "The whole team [were important]” he did pay tribute to Rodon for the way he kept going after taking a bang on the head in the first half. "He showed warrior mentality and that’s exactly what you need if you want to be successful at such a tough place – I think he was excellent today."
While Rodon was receiving treatment for several minutes I thought that at least we had Charlie Cresswell as a replacement and it would be nice for him to get a game at the stadium he graced on loan last season, but Rodon bravely soldiered on. And Wall’s other ex-loanee would be similarly disappointed, as the one change to the starting line-up saw Shackleton replaced by Byram, due to the latter’s greater attacking threat.
The home side made a determined onslaught in the opening stages, with Leeds having to withstand a barrage of long throws and corners, to of which were needlessly conceded by a nervy defence. There was one anxious moment when Meslier lost the ball under pressure from Bradshaw, but the referee spared his blushes by giving the foul, and in any case Struijk raced back to hook the ball off the line.
And on 15 minutes another mixup led to a bizarre passage of play that would end with Leeds racing down the field to score the first goal. Meslier came out and didn’t clear convincingly, and as Ayling dealt with it he was barged over in the box. He did well not to handle the ball, and although some fans on the Millwall form have claimed he was guilty of obstruction, I thought the initial foul was on him.
The home side had more of a case when the ball was partially cleared and Piroe seemed to catch one of their players, but just when I thought we’d conceded a free kick in a dangerous position, the referee waved play on. What happened next was sublime. Rutter raced away into the Millwall half and fed Gnonto on the left.
When he played the ball inside Piroe stepped over it as he saw Rutter coming in, and the Frenchman played him in with an inch-perfect pass, and Piroe supplied the finish with a shot that curled just inside the far post. The home side erupted in fury, and were to berate the referee for the rest of the game. To be fair, the officials did their best to even things up by allowing their defenders to body check Gnonto throughout the game without a yellow card in sight.
As Millwall tried to get back into the game Longman cut into the area from their left and curled the ball towards the far corner, but Meslier produced a fine save to keep him out. At the other end Summerville tried a clever chip from a difficult angle when he was left with no other option, and was unlucky to see the ball curl just the wrong side of the post.
At the start of the second half Meslier again had to be alert to keep out a firm shot from Bradshaw, but otherwise the home side were beginning to struggle to make any impact on our defence. They seemed to have few ideas other than lumping it up to their centre forward, and Rodon and Struijk were winning most of the balls in the air.
So Gary Rowett made three attacking substitutions, but that just seemed to open them up for Leeds to pick them off on the counter-attack in the later stages. To do so Farke made two changes of his own in the 69th, with fresh legs on the flanks in the shape of James and Anthony in place of Gnonto and Summerville, which certainly paid dividends eight minutes later.
James raced through the middle and found Rutter on the right, and as the Frenchman crossed into the six yard box James fell over but managed to provide the worst assist of all time! The ball came off his knee on the ground and rolled into the path of Piroe, who hammered the ball home from close range. I had to look at the linesman, but he had been onside at the moment that James had kneed the ball on.
That started a trickle of Millwall fans heading for the exits, which became a torrent a few minutes later as Leeds scored the third. This began as a Millwall attack broke down on the edge of the area, and Ayling saw the opportunity to exploit Dan James’ pace by sending the ball long, knowing that he would be the one to get on the end of it.
As James played the ball inside the ball to a fortunate deflection off the heel of the first defender, which took it behind the second, leaving Rutter with time to take one touch to steady himself, before smashing the ball into the net with his second. And we could have piled even further embarrassment on the home side in the final minutes, as Anthony had a shot blocked from close range and a free kick deflected over the bar.
All of which was too much for the loony section down to our left, and by now you will all have seen the video on social media of angry trampoline man bouncing up and down while his fat mate offered to meet the whole Leeds travelling support outside. Even the sniggering teenagers behind them could see how pathetic it all was.
With an eye of the two games we have to play in the next six days Farke gave Piroe, Gray and Rutter a few minutes rest while Kamara, Gruev and Gelhardt made cameo appearances, before the final whistle put Millwall out of their misery. Now let’s hope we can ruin the cup final of another bunch of Leeds-haters on Wednesday night, when we visit Hull City.