Preston North End deserved their bit of good luck says interim boss Frankie McAvoy

The only goal of the clash at the Liberty Stadium came in the 91st minute, Swans skipper Matt Grimes putting through his own goal.

After a long throw-in from Tom Barkhuizen had been cleared, Ben Whiteman’s scuffed shot fell to substitute Scott Sinclair.

His close-range effort was parried by keeper Freddie Woodman, the ball hitting Grimes and rolling in.

Having been the better team throughout, PNE had kept the pressure up going into the final stages rather than settle for a point.

Interim head coach McAvoy told the Lancashire Post: “Our task was to try and win the game and at 0-0 we were in with a chance of doing that so why not go for it?

“The least we deserved would have been to come away with a 0-0 draw.

“Lady Luck shone on us at the end with the goal but sometimes you earn that luck and we certainly earned it.

“I’m delighted for the lads, they worked ever so hard from start to finish.”

When McAvoy took over from Alex Neil at the start of the international break, his first batch of games looked daunting to say the least.

The first three opponents are all top-four sides yet PNE have four points from the first two of them.

Both goals of McAvoy’s tenure have come in time added on, Brad Potts scoring in the 95th minute against Norwich on Good Friday to earn a draw.

Said McAvoy: “All I have asked of the lads is to give me everything. If they do that, whatever the outcome is we deal with it.

“The approach whether we are playing Norwich, Swansea or Brentford is to try and win.

“If you had said to me last week we would get four points from Norwich and Swansea, would I have taken that? Of course I would.”

Swansea had not been a happy hunting ground for PNE for many years.

They had lost all five visits before yesterday to the Liberty Stadium, while their last win at Swansea’s former Vetch Field home had been in 1961.

McAvoy was humble at such a statistic though, his focus purely on points and not history.

The 53-year-old said: “It’s not about myself, it’s about the players. They make it happen on the pitch.

“What we do on the sidelines is just try to help them as much as we can.

“It is the players who go out and do the hard work.”

PNE had Daniel Johnson and Sean Maguire missing with calf strains yesterday, Anthony Gordon another absentee through injury.

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