'I just hope' - Sky Sports pundit vents frustration at Preston North End man as transfer wish outlined
PNE head to Ipswich Town this weekend on the back of three straight league defeats
Sky Sports pundit Don Goodman hopes a strong end to the transfer window can spark Preston North End back into life.
Since beating Bristol City away from home on January 4 - a result which took Paul Heckingbottom’s side up to fourth - it has been a challenging few weeks for PNE. North End were hammered, 4-0, at Middlesbrough last weekend and have now lost their last four games, across all competitions, without scoring.
As Goodman highlights, a number of other factors have made life tougher for the Deepdale club. For the ex-Wolves and Sunderland man, the red card shown to Milutin Osmajic - in the dying seconds of Preston’s three-nil home loss to Hull City - was a particularly big blow to take.
Speaking to NewBettingSites.uk, Goodman said: “They’ve clearly got a bit of a madman in the building in Milutin Osmajić, who just keeps getting himself suspended. He’s now been suspended for 20 games and that doesn’t just disrupt him and his career, it disrupts the whole environment.
“As a teammate, you’re looking at him thinking, ‘What are you doing? Are you crazy?’ It inevitably has a negative impact. Then you add the injuries they’ve suffered, and Everton recalling Harrison Armstrong, and suddenly the whole picture at Deepdale looks pretty negative.
“All of that has led Preston to gravitate closer to where, in all honesty, most people probably expected them to be. Give them their dues, in the first half of the season, they were way ahead of expectation. In fact, earlier in the campaign, I would have nominated Paul Heckingbottom for Manager of the Season.
“They were massively overachieving and they weren’t fluking results either. They were doing it in a really strong, convincing way. But now it feels like a bit of footballing reality setting in.
“There have been four, five, six, even seven clubs who’ve spent time in the top half, around the play-offs or even the top four, where we’ve all looked and thought, ‘We weren’t expecting that.’
“Now, only a couple of the ‘surprise packages’ are still there: Hull, Wrexham and maybe Millwall to a slightly lesser extent. Slowly and surely, the table has taken a less surprising shape with the exception of some of the bigger clubs we all expected towards the top!”
‘Incredibly difficult’.
Goodman added: “It's not just Preston whose form has dipped a little, it’s the likes of Stoke, Bristol City, maybe Watford, and QPR who are all having little runs which mean they naturally drift back towards the part of the table where most probably expected them to be.
“Unfortunately for Preston, a 46-game season is a marathon and sustaining that level over such a long period is incredibly difficult. I just hope they’re able to either get Harrison Armstrong back, or add to what’s now becoming a very threadbare squad that’s under real pressure from injuries and suspensions.”