PNE boss Grayson confident there'll be no Newcastle repeat

The Magpies romped to a 6-0 win at St James’ Park on Tuesday night as the 10-man Lilywhites crashed out of the EFL Cup at the fourth round stage.

Aleksandar Mitrovic opened the scoring before Alan Browne was sent off for an elbow on Jack Colback midway through the first half.

From then things kept on going from bad to worse as Anders Lindegaard’s goal was peppered from start to finish - it taking until the 86th minute for Paul Huntington to register North End’s first attempt at goal.

Attention quickly turns to the meeting between the sides at Deepdale in the Championship on Saturday as PNE look to bounce back from the biggest defeat of Grayson’s time in charge, one that ended a run of seven games without defeat.

“Of course it’s going to be a different game,” said the Preston boss, who had no complaints with Browne’s dismissal.

“This is a big arena, a big pitch, it will be different on Saturday.

“I’m not going to make promises it will be a different scoreline but I’d like to think that it will be. They’ll have changes, we’ll have changes.

“We’ve been on a good run beating Norwich, Huddersfield, Brighton and Aston Villa in the last month and we’ll go back to how we’ve done hopefully.”

It was the second heavy reverse of the season after the 5-0 loss at Brentford, North End’s last defeat in all competitions before the horrible night in the North East.

“It’s how you react to things,” Grayson said.

“That’s why you’ve got to be careful what you say to the players after the game.

“We’ve been on a good run and this was always going to be a tough game for us against a team on a good run.

“The place was rocking and through basic mistakes we’ve contributed to them getting their win.

“I take nothing away from them because they have players that can hurt you but we made it easy for them and that’s not been like us.

“The league is our priority but we’re hugely disappointed and when you give exceptional players the time and room in the 18-yard box they’re going to punish you. Coupled with the sending off it was a long night.”

Grayson had made nine changes from the win at Norwich with the hosts making seven themselves, the PNE boss sticking by his decision to go with the players that served him well in the previous round at Bournemouth.

“They had the luxury of making seven changes and some of them are top international players,” he said.

“We made the ones that we’ve made and I don’t think they make us any weaker but they give us a different outlook of how we can play.

“We’ve got 22 players who are very much similar but contribute in different ways.

“Tonight we haven’t done the basics right but when they make changes they replace them with internationals - there’s a difference.

“We made it difficult for ourselves and we’ve got something to prove at the weekend.”