STUART Pearce admits Nottingham Forest may not have deserved to beat Millwall – but he believes they did merit the battling point they emerged with at the New Den.
The Reds maintained their unbeaten start to the campaign and held on to top spot in the Championship table, following a ground out 0-0 draw in which neither side carved out a host of opportunities.
Forest might well have snatched all three points in the final stages, when they found their attacking threat to carve out opportunities for top scorer Britt Assombalonga and Michail Antonio.
But, by the final whistle, a draw was probably a fair result against a Millwall side who had made Forest work for everything.
"In the run of play, maybe we did not deserve to win it, but we did have a couple of chances to win it towards the end. It has been a real tough week," said Pearce. "It was a real scrap, we got blocks in, we won headers, we won second balls, Millwall put us under real pressure but we have real character, a real determination not to get beaten.
"If you do not come out and win the game, you have to make sure you do not get beaten and this was one of those performances.
"We probably needed to be a bit more clinical, when it came to keeping position in midfield and taking that extra pass. We got caught up in the environment of the Den, but when we look back at the week, with everything that was going on, I am pleased that we stayed undefeated.
"It was a good point. Maybe we should have put an extra pass in, in midfield, perhaps we could have increased the tempo of the game and sped things up, over the course of 90 minutes.
"But Kelvin Wilson was in his first game back, David Vaughan was coming back from his injury as well, I was pleased to be fair, overall."
The introduction of Jamie Paterson, in the 75th minute, lifted Forest, who suddenly found themselves a threat down the right side, through the substitute and Chris Burke in particular.
"Burke and Pato were the two that sparked it for us, Pato did extremely well in a couple of situations and Burke got forward pretty well," said Pearce.
"I was disappointed that we did not play more football within the game. But there was a good defensive contribution, we did the dirty side of the game when it came to getting blocks in and such like.
"We were on the road and the fans got behind the home team a little bit and buoyed them up. I am pleased with the result.
"We do our homework on all the teams, I have played here as a player and you know what you are going to get here. But so did all the players.
"Millwall probably played as well in this game as they have in a number of weeks. I think it is one of those that, overall, is a reasonable result."
