Paul Heckingbottom on Preston North End's summer and what's required to progress

Preston North End manager Paul Heckingbottom says it’s ‘full on’ right away with regards to the summer.

The Lilywhites concluded their Championship campaign last weekend, with defeat to Southampton leaving them 14th after 46 games. Attention now turns to an intriguing summer at Deepdale, as takeover talk continues to swirl and transfer window business will have a huge say in next season’s potential. PNE’s boss will make sure he recharges mentally but at the same time, knows there isn’t a minute to waste.

“You’re always on your phone but I'm pretty good at switching off,” said Heckingbottom. “I think people get that when they can't get hold of me! They know it's because I don't want to be gotten hold of and I will come back to them. The good thing for me is I'm not travelling as much now. Apart from that, as soon as I put this microphone down, to the window closing at the beginning of September, it's full on.

“It only gets harder once the season starts and I'll literally just relax when that window shuts. Every position (we’ll be looking at). You don't know what's going to come up, so you've got to be looking and especially with the loans... Preston's done well with loans; I've always done well with loans. So, people want us to take the players. There might be options. Until the money's spent, you're always looking.”

It was Preston’s 11th consecutive season in the Championship. Heckingbottom has spoken a lot about investment of late, amid Amr Zedan’s links to the Deepdale outfit. When asked how he turns PNE from a mid-table club into season-long contenders, his response did not take much thinking.

“Probably solid mid-table finances,” said Heckingbottom. “Then, I think we do things really, really well in terms of how we recruit, the atmosphere we create, how we push, and if we outperform the same way we've done this season with solid mid-table finances, over a couple of seasons you can build. If you then get that season where you're overperforming as much as we have this season, from a financial point of view, we'd be right up there.”

Another busy summer in store?

“Yeah, yeah, this is where it starts, this is where it happens,” Heckingbottom told BBC Radio Lancashire. “We worked really hard last season to do that. It’s difficult when you speak to players about contracts but if money's tied up with them, you've got to find money somewhere. We had to let Theo (Mawene) go... got a few hundred grand there.

“We had to let Jack Whatmough go, which suited Jack and it allowed us then to spend that money on Odel (Offiah), Thierry (Small). We did the same in January with Steffi (Stefan Thordarson) and Mads (Frokjaer), got the money for them which allowed us to bring in Andy (Moran) and Callum (Lang). So yeah, that's constant, that's the process.”