From good to bad... Preston fan Tim Mercer ponders a very strange season so far

Apart from a brief spell early on, North End were second best all over the park, leaving no player able to hold their head up by the end of the 90 minutes.

Have no doubt about it, Luton thoroughly deserved their 3-0 win and could easily have had more in front of the 2,000 home supporters allowed back into Kenilworth Road.

On this showing they would no doubt like their team to play against a ‘bad Preston’ from now to the end of the season.Before the gloom set in the visitors had started well, creating three clear cut opportunities that fell to Jayden Stockley, Tom Barkhuizen and Alan Browne in that order.

Stockley should have done better from about six yards out when getting on the end of good set-piece delivery, but instead sent his header at the wrong angle into the ground with the bounce going over the bar.

Barkhuizen put in a tame shot from a good chance he had created for himself and Browne put his strike well over the bar from a fine pass that deserved better.

Shortly after that James Collins scored the first goal of his hat-trick, with it resulting from a combination of mistakes and lacklustre appetite that littered the remainder of the game.

Time and again the visitors were second to the ball, losing their battles in every position on the pitch and with the use of all five substitutes making no impact from the bench.

The only relief came on hearing the final whistle, as there is thankfully little time to mull over this before the next game away to Barnsley on Tuesday evening. Let’s keep our fingers crossed and hope that ‘good Preston’ turn up to that one.