PNE drew 0-0 with Burnley on Saturday afternoon

Ex-Preston North End striker David Nugent said his old club were hard done by after a ‘perfect’ free-kick routine at Burnley.

The Lilywhites had the ball in the back of the Clarets’ net, inside five minutes on Saturday afternoon. Ben Whiteman played a quick free-kick into the path of Emil Riis, who ran on to the ball and smashed it into the bottom left corner.

The linesman’s flag was raised and the goal ruled out, but replays showed the Dane had timed his run excellently. It finished 0-0 at Turf Moor, with second half chances few and far between. Needless to say, the Riis decision was a major talking point in the Sky Sports studio.

"Yeah, set pieces, they've obviously been working on this at the training ground,” said Nugent. “Emil makes a great run down the side of the defence and gets a shot off. Obviously, from the replay, you can see he is a good yard onside. We are talking about officials again. I don't really like doing it, but it's a perfect free-kick. Burnley have set up not very well, to deal with it. He gets in, scores and they should go one-nil up."

Also part of the Sky Sports punditry team, on the day, was ex-PNE boss Alex Neil. The Scot analysed the Lilywhites’ start to life under Paul Heckingbottom pre-match and asked the current manager some questions too. He was equally bewildered by the decision to chalk off Riis’ goal and knew the work which will have gone into creating the opportunity.

"Yeah, Hecky has discussed how difficult goals have been to come by for Preston, first and foremost,” said Neil. “When you do score like that, the biggest difficulty you've got is that it's a dead ball. So, the linesman is not having to run. He is static, looking straight across the line as it's getting taken and for me, it's a really, really poor decision, because Preston should be leading."