Nelson Oliveira delighted Norwich City’s travelling support at Millwall with a goal for loan club Reading that pushed Paul Lambert’s Ipswich Town closer to League One.

The Portugal international smashed home the opener in a 2-1 win for the Royals at Portman Road on Saturday, before a fist pump celebration as he raced towards the disgruntled Blues’ support.

News of Oliveira’s strike swiftly reached the 3,200 travelling fans at The Den, who chanted the forward’s name during the Canaries’ own 3-1 league win that kept them top of the Championship.

Lambert refused to raise the white flag after a damaging defeat but Ipswich is now 12 points behind fourth-from-bottom Reading, with a massively inferior goal difference.

“It’s still possible. It’s going to be really hard. But you never, ever give in,” he said, after watching the game from the stands as he served the final match of his two game ban for impromper conduct following his sending off in the 3-0 derby defeat at Carrow Road. “We’ve got too many fans that come and support to give up. The support was fabulous again. You feel it for them because they’ve been absolutely brilliant since we’ve come in.

“As I keep saying, it’s not a normal situation the way they keep turning up and getting behind us. You’re going to have that downbeat feeling. That’s normal when you lose a game. But you can’t let it fester because that brings everybody down.

“You try and analyse it for one day and then you’ve got to let it go. It will hurt, no doubt, for a couple of days. Then you get them back in and you go again.”

Oliveira joined Reading on loan in January after falling out of favour under Daniel Farke.

The forward was forced off with a hamstring injury in the second half, but could do his parent club another favour or two over the run in with José Gomes’ battlers playing Leeds, West Brom and Middlesbrough in their survival quest.

“It was a real Championship game.

“I told my players that if I die in England, they are responsible. My heart rate at some times - I was full of emotion,” said Gomes. “The points were important, especially when we checked at the end of the game and saw that Rotherham had got three points also.

“Now we have a bigger distance from Bolton, and we’re nearer to Wigan.”