A handful of new staff arrived at Preston North End this summer

Preston North End manager Paul Heckingbottom has been impressed with his new staff so far this season.

The Lilywhites made changes off the pitch ahead of the 2025/26 campaign, with fitness coach Andy Liddell and first team coach Jason Euell making the move to PNE.

In the analyst department, Joe Walmsley arrived after a spell with Wigan Athletic while Tom Reeves came in as chief scout to work alongside head of recruitment, James Wallace. With the new season well under way, Heckingbottom has been happy with the overall impact.

“Yeah, good,” said Heckingbottom. “Bit of a different feel. I wanted it to be as different as possible from a playing staff (point of view) but then, likewise, the players need to feel different as well.

“This is a club, and you speak to any staff, one of the strengths is how tight it is and how little turnover there is. And one of the weaknesses is how tight it is, and how little turnover there is, if that makes sense.

“Usually there’s just a change in feeling when a manager changes. I feel like we've been able to reinvigorate the place and give it a shake-up, if you like, without changing the manager. I'm glad we waited because, to be fair to Craig and Peter, they said when we came in, ‘Look, you can do what you want’.

“But you never know. You want to see people, see how they work, how they perform and from my point of view, I'm glad we waited and assessed. It was really clear what type of people I would like to bring in, and also the skill set so we could work in a slightly different way.”

The value added by first team football analyst Walmsley was highlighted in a pre-season interview with in-house media, by Heckingbottom. He spent four years with the Latics, had an earlier stint with PNE and also gained experience with East Bengal. He is someone Heckingbottom is delighted to have in his camp.

“Just more experience,” said Heckingbottom. “Listen, he's a massive PNE fan, which helps. He'd be on the Town End, I think, if he wasn’t up in the gantry for us. But he's got good experience in what we want him to do and, he won’t mind me saying this, he's also a bit of a nerd on the computer.

“He's a bit of a whiz for us, which is great. So, he's adding a different skill set to us as well and that's it. Like I said, if we're all the same, we'd be a really poor group of staff. So, I think the fact we've got different characters and different people, with different skill sets, only helps us.”

Your next PNE read: Jeppe Okkels in talks with overseas club