Preston North End battled their way to a 0-0 draw with Norwich City at Carrow Road, but it was the hosts who will be disappointed not to come away with the three points.
Although North End came closest to scoring with Ben Whiteman hitting the bar, and Jack Whatmough coming close late on, it was The Canaries who showed the most desire to win the game.
It does stop Preston’s losing run after three defeats on the bounce and it was the first clean sheet in 15 games, so there are some positives to take. But on the whole it was a very poor watch showcasing a side devoid of confidence, and scared to attack.
A point on the road but 2 wins in 13
The run of form we are on is one of the worst in the league, and it seems so long ago when we were at the top of the table after six wins from the first seven. We were mixing it with Leicester City and Ipswich Town at the end of September, but now those teams are 20 and 19 points ahead of us respectively.
We’ve massively dropped off the pace, and not since 23rd September have we had more shots on target than the opposition. We’ve had just four shots on target in the last four games. There seems to be no plan or tactics on how to win games.
Yes we are 9th and one point off the play-offs, but scratch beneath the surface and this is a team in freefall.
Lowe’s post match comments said it all
“The game plan was to keep the back door shut and then whatever happened after that, we’d take,” said Lowe after the game. That cannot be the view of a Championship manager. He’s admitting there was no other game plan apart from trying to get a clean sheet. He makes it sound as if we were up against Real Madrid.
We were playing a team who had the second worst defensive record in the league, and there was no plan to exploit that.
“The game plan we put together for them, from the start of the week to today, they executed it brilliantly.” Did that game plan really take a week to put together and drill into them? It was a simple message surely? Defend. We sat behind the ball and clung on for the whole 90 minutes.
“They did everything I asked of them”. He really couldn’t have asked for much then.
Whenever we had possession we panicked and quickly gave it away. Norwich should have done better with some of the chances they had. Liam Gibbs should have scored from a great position and only an Alan Browne clearance off the line denied them a winner from the corner.
Had we gone a goal down at any stage, I very much doubt we would have had a plan B.
If we sit back and give this much respect to Norwich City we might as well not bother turning up at Chelsea.
Lowe’s admitted he’s not using one of our only creative players correctly
When the team lineups came out at 2pm, it took a little while to work out how Preston were actually going to set up. There was four central defenders starting, but it was Andrew Hughes who played left-wing-back and Liam Millar joined Ched Evans up front.
Millar is one of the only players with a bit of pace in the side, and someone who can take on players, but he’s a bit lost up front, and has obviously admitted that to the manager.
After the game, Lowe said “He said that is not him and we know that, but the fact of the matter is he’s done a job for the lads – as our outlet ball.”
Millar is only on loan and we should be trying to make that permanent as and when, but he’s not going to want to join if we are playing him out of position. We need to get the most out of him by playing him out wide.
Good to have McCann back
Ali McCann made a welcome return, making his first start since the 4th October. The Northern Ireland international had been injured for the best part of two months, and after a substitute appearance against Queens Park Rangers last week he was back in the starting eleven.
McCann made some good tackles and interceptions in the middle of the park. Him and Ryan Ledson were key to our impressive start at the season, with those two breaking play up deep, and Alan Browne pushed up with either Mads Frokjaer or Duane Holmes,
Since Ben Whiteman has returned to the side he hasn’t really contributed much, and the poor run of form has followed.