Lee thankful for Millwall's loan stars

The Lions had lost six of their opening seven Championship matches before Lee brought in the Leeds winger Jermaine Wright, Coventry defender Ady Williams and Tottenham full-back Phil Ifil on three-month loans. Since their arrival, Millwall have won two of their last four Championship matches and drawn the other two to give them a fighting chance of climbing away from relegation trouble.

"We needed to get loan players in to help us and those three have made a difference," Lee admitted yesterday. "I would like to think we could keep them when their loan periods expire. As it stands, they'll have to leave in early December. I would be disappointed to have to go back to the side we were using at the start of the season, because that wasn't good enough."

Lee felt his side had created enough chances to win the game after Barry Hayles' equaliser in first-half stoppage time had cancelled out QPR striker Marc Nygaard's opener.

The Millwall manager accused the Rangers midfielder Marc Bircham of blocking Don Hutchison, who had been marking Nygaard, and was unhappy that the goal had been allowed.

"Don had already told the referee [Dermot Gallagher] that he was being blocked at corners, so we were a bit upset he let it go," Lee said. "We had chances to win it at the end and I thought we shaded it."

QPR manager Ian Holloway refused to apologise for any blocking tactics. Holloway was also quick to praise Nygaard, whom many believed was a signing authorised by chairman-elect Gianni Paladini rather than Holloway himself.

"Marc is not the prettiest player in the world - at 6ft 5in, he isn't going to be," Holloway said. "But he will be a handful. One of the Millwall players nearly fell over when he saw Marc in the tunnel, and that is two goals in two games for him now.

"As for the goal, those are moves we practise all the time. It's Hutchison's fault if he didn't manage to stay with his man."

Holloway also revealed that his players had exchanged cross words during the interval following Hayles' equaliser in the final seconds of the half.

"They had a bit of a go at each other," Holloway said, "but they shouldn't, because they're still learning. Having said that, I was disappointed we didn't deal with the situation, because we hadn't looked in trouble at all before that."