Budapest return holds no fear for Wise's men

"I don't think their fans will be able to intimidate us. Having played at The Den for as long as me and some of the other lads have, I think we have seen pretty much everything.

"It won't bother us and I am sure we will have a great and noisy following of our own. We have got enough players in our team with experience and a few tricks of our own to not have to worry about them."

On their showing, Harris is right. Millwall could have last night's bitpart players Jody Morris, Paul Ifill and Danny Dichio back to full fitness by then, although of the three, midfielder Morris faces the biggest test to be fit for Sunday's game against Watford after suffering a neck injury last night.

For all their domestic successes and European experience, the Hungarians found it hard to counter-attack with Millwall's high-tempo, pressure game.

Player-manager Wise adopted a more withdrawn position than usual in midfieldand dictated play. The 37-year-old gave a masterclass in distribution and showed the sort of professional cunning the Ferencvaros players clearly strived for.

The result in the first half was a few heated moments and melees amid a lot of Millwall possession with the impressive Marvin Elliott and Stefan Moore going close.

They took the lead when Wise capped a great performance by chipping a free kick into the far corner from 20 yards in the 65th minute.

But his team's disciplined approach wavered 13 minutes later when David Livermore naively slid in and fouled Aleksandar Bajevski on the edge of his penalty area.

Peter Lipcsei scored from the resulting free-kick as he matched Wise's effort to teach Millwall a harsh European lesson and take the shine off a good night. "It was a daft foul to give away on the edge of the box but we can definitely take confidence from our performance into the away leg," said defender Matt Lawrence. "There are not many of us who have played in Europe before and it was a fantastic experience. "

Unfortunately, the club's groundbreaking game was not seen` by that many Millwall fans at The Den.

The attendance, which included just 245 away supporters, was affected by ticket sales being restricted to members and season ticket holders in an attempt to keep out troublemakers.

Lawrence added: "I thought it was a good game and it was a crying shame there was only 11,667 supporters there.

"Millwall were in Europe against quite a big side. They may not be that well known in England but they are in European competition every year. Some of them may disagree with me and talk about ticket allocations and the prices or whatever, but I think it is a shame more people did not turn up to see the game."

Lawrence and his team-mates will probably be watched by a larger crowd at The Den against Watford but the Millwall management will not be overly disappointed.

At least it should help prevent their players being distracted from their priority of promotion by the UEFA Cup.

That is what happened with the FA Cup at the end of last season and assistant manager Ray Wilkins has threatened to drop players to the reserves if there are any hints of a repeat.

Further talk of Budapest and Millwall's European adventure has been put on hold.