Fifty-five seconds That’s all it took for Lewis Grabban to underline his importance to Nottingham Forest.
That’s all it took for him to find the back of the net after being given the call to arms by Sabri Lamouchi.
First touch. Goal.
He didn’t need a second invitation to make it a brace, either. Grabban is the very definition of a goal poacher - and he’s pretty darn good at it. One of the best in the league.
No wonder Lamouchi frequently talks of “keeping him in the fridge” between games. He was ice cool when it mattered at Millwall.
He needed to be.
Lamouchi will have learnt much from how the 90 minutes of Friday night’s 2-2 draw unfolded at The Den.
Still little more than four months into the Championship campaign and his first experience of English football, he is the first to admit he is still adapting; still taking lessons on board.
He as good as admitted, too, in South London, with his tactics and team selection at kick-off.
But quick learner that he is, the Frenchman was astute enough to change it early in the second half - and it paid dividends.
Some big calls had been made with his starting XI, not least leaving Grabban on the bench, in favour of playing Lewis Mir up front.
And also the decision to go with a back five, with Michael Dawson coming in alongside Joe Worrall and Tobias Figueiredo; Matty Cash and Jack Robinson as wing-backs.
It would be a surprise if that particular system gets another airing any time soon. That particular experiment fell flat.
The visitors were completely out of sorts in the opening 45 minutes.
They were off the pace. They were sloppy and careless when they did have the ball and looked shaky at the back when the Lions pushed forward.
If Mir was hoping to get a chance to shine, it never really happened. Not least because he had next to no service.
The Wolverhampton Wanderers loanee came in for some stick on social media for his performance, but he didn’t exactly have a great deal to work with.
It was Millwall who carried the greater threat, and they opened the scoring with quarter of an hour gone.
Ben Thompson had missed a good headed chance in the first five minutes, but Shaun Williams made no such mistake when he was left unmarked from a corner.
What unfolded after that was as poor as Forest have been all season. If they’d been offered a draw at that point, they’d have snapped their opponents’ hand off for it.
They were well and truly second best.
But the second half was a completely different matter.
Initially at least, Lamouchi stuck with the same personnel, and there was an improvement - Sammy Ameobi and Alfa Semedo both trying their luck.
When reinforcements arrived from the bench, though, and the Reds reverted to their more familiar four-man defence, they really hit their stride. And Grabban hit the target. Standard.
The front man was roundly booed by the home crowd as he entered the pitch against his old club. But they were soon drowned out by the noise from the away end when he made it 1-1.
A free-kick from Tiago Silva was headed back across goal by Joe Worrall, with Grabban lurking in the right place to prod it home.
He enjoyed that one.
The hosts looked to mount an immediate response, and it took an exceptional save from Brice Samba, followed by a goal-line clearance from Sammy Ameobi to keep them at bay.
When Grabban made it 2-1 two minutes from time, that looked for all the world like being the winner.
Teed up by Ameobi, it was another close-range finish, taking his tally for the season up to 10.
Still, to their credit, Millwall did not give in and Aiden O’Brien ensured the spoils were shared when he reacted quickest after Samba had parried Williams’ shot.
It was a tough one for Lamouchi’s men to take, given their position a few minutes earlier. But from where they had been at the interval, it was
Millwall: Bialkowski, Wallace, Cooper, Williams, Wallace, Thompson (Mahoney 83), Smith (Bradshaw 61), Romeo, Pearce, Molumby, Skalak (O’Brien 78). Subs not used: Sandford, Hutchinson, Brown, Bodvarsson.
Forest: Samba, Cash, Figueiredo (Lolley 57), Dawson, Worrall, Robinson, Watson, Semedo (Adomah 80), Silva, Ameobi, Mir (Grabban 62). Subs not used: Muric, Carvalho, Bostock, Chema.
Attendance: 12,976 (1,267 away).
