Preston North End must damage Brentford not just press

The Lilywhites travel to Griffin Park for a 5pm kick off that could all but decide their play-off fate.

The Bees have welcomed the return of football more than most sides, setting off on a five-game winning streak whilst playing scintillating football.

North End tend to enjoy these sorts of fixtures, disrupting the opposition by giving them very little room as they look to build out but it's going to take more than just winning the ball back, according to Alex Neil.

He said: "You need to do more than that well against a team like Brentford.

"You need to be in a good shape defensively, if you're going to get after the ball you need to do it in a really organised and structured way.

"You need to do it in a good intensity and with real aggression and then when you do get the opportunity, nick it back.

"It's all about looking at percentages when you're working in that way.

"What I mean by that is that if they're going to build out from the back 10 times, you're working on the premise that we'd get the ball back six times, which then bodes well in our favour.

"Then how many times you can damage them in those six interceptions to therefore have them potentially playing through us.

"It's putting those risks in our favour as much as possible. In the main, certainly at home against Brentford, that's served us well."

Neil has utilised several different formations in recent weeks, using three different formations in their last three games.

The Scot is well known in PR1 for picking specific line ups for specific opposition.

He said: "It's about how you want the game to be played, what is the strategy of the match? Do you want to play in transitions and hunt the ball, do you want to try and sit deeper and hit them on the counter?

"There is a lot more that goes into it than just sitting and selecting starting XI's which is always easy to do.

"Over my time here, the 4-3-3- or 4-2-3-1, depending on how we use it, has served us well.

"It's a system that has served us well, it's a system that has given us success.

"I think we've done alright with it the last few seasons and certainly this season when we were flying high as that was the system we used."

"Sometimes having the ball can be problematic in itself then, because you allow other teams to hit you in transitions.

"I think Cardiff City are a prime example, we controlled the majority of possession against Cardiff and I watched them do the exact same against Fulham.

"Unfortunately, when you play through them on those four or five occasions you need to damage them because when they do nick it, and they always will, because you're going to make mistakes, it's how much they can damage you in transition."