Preston North End injury news as 24-year-old pushing to return for Sheffield United opener

Preston North End midfielder Ali McCann is touch and go for the first game of the new season.

The Northern Ireland international has played no part in pre-season, with a previous injury flaring up again. The Lilywhites have taken a cautious approach with the 24-year-old, who made 31 appearances in the last Championship campaign.

McCann is being monitored closely by PNE’s medical department. He may well miss the Friday night opener against Sheffield United, but manager Ryan Lowe is hopeful of having Milutin Osmajic back in the fold soon.

"Milly's okay and will hopefully be involved on Tuesday," said Lowe. "Ali has had - not a setback - but a little bit of a calf strain, where we are sort of wrapping him up in cotton wool a little bit. He'll hopefully get back on the grass next week and hopefully he is around for the first game.

“We don't know yet. We will have to keep monitoring him, but he's getting better day-by-day and doing a lot of stuff off the grass. Milly should be fine. He has come through today and will train fully on Monday. He had a nerve (issue) in his back. So yeah, all good."

Preston have taken on Lincoln City, Southport, Bamber Bridge, Tranmere Rovers, Liverpool and Fiorentina so far this summer. It’s now on to Salford City on Tuesday night, before Everton head to Deepdale this weekend.

Lowe added: "We'll get them in, recover and see how fatigued they are for Monday. We want to try and go as strong as we can for the next two games, because we want to get more 70s, 80s and 90s into some lads. We've got a chart of where the lads are up to. We are going into the season with Saturday-Tuesday-Saturday. we need to make sure everyone is fit and ready."