Preston boss Alex Neil pleased with winning start to pre-season

Goals from Scott Sinclair, Billy Bodin and Josh Harrop sealed the victory in the behind-closed-doors friendly against the Ammies, who are managed by North End legend Graham Alexander and skippered by former PNE defender Tom Clarke.

City – who enjoyed their first season as a Football League club before the coronavirus pandemic brought a premature halt to the 2019-20 campaign – certainly provided some stiff opposition.

Neil took the opportunity to give the majority of his squad some game time, with the North End line-up changing in its entirety at the hour mark.

“I think the fact that Salford are a few weeks ahead of us, who have had a few games already, I thought it was a proper match,” Neil told iFollow PNE.

“You could see they were up for it, they squeeze the pitch well, I thought they put us under pressure and we had to find the answer.

“The one thing you want is you want a good test, a good run out, you want the lads to get on the ball, make things happen, get good fitness out of it and make sure we don’t pick up any injuries and certainly to this point, that’s what’s happened, so that’s good.”

Having picked two teams for the game against Salford, Neil was pleased with the way they both adapted.

“We prepped both teams playing against each other, so they’d already had their work done in terms of how they were going to play when they came on, so there wasn’t any concern that we just threw them altogether.

“I think you could see that, the organisation, the quality and where they found themselves on the pitch and the dilemmas they caused the opposition when we did have the ball, I thought we carried a real threat which was good.”

Two players who did not feature were striker Louis Moult and defender Darnell Fisher. Moult, of course, is still feeling his way back after suffering a serious knee injury last season, while Fisher has picked up a knock in training.