Striving for more: Defender Ben Davies not satisfied with last season despite double award

Although generally happy with his form, the 23-year-old thinks he has more to offer and wants to show that in the 2019/20 campaign.

Davies told the Lancashire Post: “I think I did alright last season but in many ways I had a better season the one before in terms of consistency.

“Everyone in the squad could have done better and we all want to get better this year and have a strong season.

“If we can all show more consistency throughout the season, we will do a lot better.

“Maybe my standards were higher last season and that is why I feel I wasn’t reaching them consistently.

“Maybe in some matches I did play better than the season before but I don’t think I was as consistent.

“It’s no point playing well for six, seven or eight games and then going through a bad spell where you don’t produce your good form.

“Look at how consistent we were after Christmas, we won eight and drew four out of 12.

“That was superb form, promotion form even, then we fell away.”

Davies has enjoyed being back in training, the North End squad having completed double sessions on Thursday and again yesterday.

They were training again today at Springfields before getting a breather tomorrow.

“Our summer break was seven weeks which was good,” said Davies.

“At any other time of the years seven weeks doesn’t seem to go too quickly but you notice how fast time goes in the summer.

“In the last 10 days or so I really began to look forward to coming back, seeing the lads and being in a routine.

“I didn’t dread coming back, this is a privileged job and it’s great to do.

“During the break I kept myself ticking over and that helps you handle the work during pre-season.

“At the start of the summer I had two or three weeks rest and then started easing back in to the fitness programme.

“You tended to do three or four sessions a week, every other day basically.

“To start with it was longer distance stuff than the closer it got to coming back, you went down to the shorter, sharper stuff – three-minute bursts, two minutes, 100m sprints, more of the football specific work.

“It’s not as if you are killing yourself doing this work, it is about ticking over.”

Meanwhile, North End have scrapped the red away kit they were going to wear this season.

Instead an all-yellow strip will be used on their travels, with last season’s green kit the alternative.