Preston North End stance amid whispers of exit for member of Ryan Lowe's coaching staff

Preston North End are not expecting to lose assistant manager, Mike Marsh, the Lancashire Post understands.

With the 2023/24 campaign coming to an end, speculation around the future of Ryan Lowe’s number two has done the rounds. But, it’s believed that PNE and Lowe are not currently preparing for the ex-England U17 coach to leave anytime soon.

Marsh arrived at North End at the same time as Lowe, who was appointed boss in December 2021. When Steven Schumacher opted to stay at Plymouth Argyle, Lowe moved quickly to bring Marsh to Deepdale with him.

“There was a time when I didn’t know what to do!” said Lowe, earlier this season. “When we were talking about assistant managers, we’d already spoken about Mike Marsh. I was hopefully going to bring him and Schuey with us, but then Schuey turned to say he would stay and that was fine. Then, the minute I met Marshy - he came to my house the night Schuey agreed to take the Plymouth job. We sat there and must’ve had about ten cups of tea.

“We spoke to each other about how I work and how he works, then I went: ‘Right, what are you thinking?’ and he said: ‘I’m in.’ And that was it. He left ours, we met the next morning, went up to Preston North End to get the contracts all sorted. Schuey is still one of my best mates and always will be; a fantastic coach. But, I couldn’t have fallen more on another top, top coach and top, top person in Mike Marsh to fulfill his role.”

The former Liverpool, West Ham and Southend United man boasts an impressive coaching CV - having worked with David Wagner at Huddersfield Town and Steve Cooper at Swansea City. Marsh was also U18s coach at Liverpool, after working his way up the academy ranks at Anfield. Prior to that, he had done some coaching in PNE’s youth set-up.