PNE boss Ryan Lowe explains why he dropped Josh Onomah and also his approach to the Central League this season

Onomah, a January deadline day signing on a short term deal, came off the bench in North End’s previous game against Burnley but was left out of the 18 for the visit of the Hatters, which ended 1-1.

The 25-year-old former Fulham and Tottenham Hotspur man has been building himself back up to fitness having played just twice this season before moving to Lancashire and Lowe feels he’s still currently away from the required mark.

With Ben Whiteman now banned for Saturday’s game against Hull City however, he could be in line for a recall.

Lowe said: "He's fit, he's fine, Josh. He maybe comes into the fold this weekend but we don't want to push Josh too much. He's had two appearances and he's trained but I've just said to the group in there that we probably need some catch up games.

"I wasn't going to play senior pros in the Central League game yesterday against Bolton because they're not really going to get that much out of it. We'll maybe look for a bounce game next week against someone really competitive to get him some more match minutes.

"I had to have people game ready today, albeit Josh is not far off. We've got to manage him as much as we possibly can to get him up to speed but it might take a couple of weeks.

"He's been fine in training, his attitude and application is top drawer but today we just felt we needed something different.”

North End managed to stop the rot at Deepdale on Wednesday but focus now turns to their away game at Hull.

Lowe is looking for his side to build on their result in midweek, having fought back with a man disadvantage to take a point from the top six Hatters.

He said: “Hopefully it changes now. We obviously managed to get a result with 10 men and we want to build on that. Our next home league game is Wigan.

"We'll be looking at Hull first and foremost to build on the result and performance today, hopefully with 11 men on the pitch because it certainly helps. Our main objective now is to get the lads recovered so we can go to Hull to get a result.

“Liam Rosenior has gone in there and done well, he's got them playing well. We want to go and compete with everyone in the division and we've done that all season, bar a few.

"That's something we looked to do. It was a great point for us at Luton because it breaks that hoodoo of losing at home but we've got to build on that on Saturday away at Hull.”