Paul Huntington says Preston North End will benefit from time on the training pitch

The packed schedule of games in the last few weeks has limited the time spent at Euxton, with that being the case again when action starts again a week on Saturday.

Between then and early January, North End will play 12 Championship games.

In the last block of games, they had three Wednesday night fixtures.

While it gave them the extra day at the start of the week, there was precious little time to prepare for the match which followed.

Huntington told the Lancashire Post: “We’ve had a couple of rest days but this week and next gives us more time to go through things.

“The schedule of the last few weeks has been pretty much play, recover, have a light training session and go again.

“We had two Wednesday away games at Queens Park Rangers and Reading which meant 3am returns.

“Your sleep is rubbish after a night game, we’d get the Thursday off and then we’d just have Friday to prepare for the next game.

“That doesn’t give you much time to go over things which you want to do better.

“During the break we can now do that, spend more time in training, go through things in a bit more detail.

“Between games a lot of the work might be video analysis on what we have done well and what we haven’t done well.

“Being able to run through things on the pitch is better.

“We’ve got a couple of lads away on international duty who we will have to do things without. But they will be able to slot back in when they are back with us.”

Huntington, 33, has been back in the side of late after injuries to Patrick Bauer and Ben Davies.

He was a half-time sub in the home defeat to Millwall, then started the 3-0 win at Reading and last Saturday’s 2-1 loss at Rotherham.

The Cumbrian Cannavaro now has 286 appearances for PNE under his belt, with him edging nearer to the 300 mark he would love to reach.

Said Huntington: “I played a couple of the cup games at the start, so I’m on five appearances for the season.

“The win at Reading was a really good performance, we had the clean sheet which we are capable of producing more of.

“Rotherham was really disappointing, we let in two rubbish goals.

“At 1-1 there was only one side looking to win it and that was us. But we made mistakes for their second goal and got punished.

“Aside from that, our away form has been very good.”

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