Preston North End boss Alex Neil excited by what 'premium' signing Jayson Molumby will bring to Deepdale

Molumby signed on loan from Brighton on Tuesday night and trained with his team-mates for the first time at Euxton on Wednesday.

He comes to North End with a campaign of football at this level under his belt having played on loan at Millwall last season.

Neil sees that experience as something which can put a player out of PNE’s budget, hence his delight at landing the 21-year-old.

Molumby did well with Millwall in 2019/20 and the Lions made a £1.5m offer to land him this week.

However, Brighton only wanted to do a loan and North End stole a march to get the deal done with the Seagulls.

Neil said: “Naturally you always want lads who know the course, have been there, seen it, done it.

“The difficult we have is that generally players like come at a premium and that premium is not where our market tends to be.

“To get Jayson done as quickly as we have done, steal a march on quite a few teams and convince him this was the best place, is a great piece of business by us.

“I’m really quite excited by what he can bring, I’m really happy with that.

“It is not easy to find someone like him with a full season under his belt at Championship level that we can get within our structure.

“We’ve done really well to get him, there are teams he’s been at before trying to get him, teams flinging more money at it than we have done.”

Neil says Molumby can do a bit of everything in terms of playing in midfield and has yet to nail down his strongest position.

That is something Neil intends working with Molumby on over the next few months.

“At Millwall he played at time as a No.10, with Ireland he’s been a No.6,” said Neil.

“Jayson is all-energy, all-aggressive, wants to get around the pitch, wants to get on the ball.

“He can fill a number of slots and that makes him really flexible which I like in a player.

“Jayson is still a young lad and I’m not sure he has found out yet what his best position is. What I can do is assist him and try to guide him in the development of his game when he’s here.”

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