‘Never an issue’ - Paul Heckingbottom responds to questions about his future as Preston North End boss
PNE have had a poor start to the season.
Paul Heckingbottom has addressed questions over his future as Preston North End manager.
PNE sit bottom of the Championship and have lost five of their first six games. They lost 2-1 to Watford on Tuesday after being 1-0 up for most of the match.
Ahead of North End welcoming Lincoln City to Deepdale this Saturday, the Lilywhites boss faced questions about whether he felt safe in his job.
When asked if he had faith in his own ability as manager, Heckingbottom said: “Yeah definitely, I'm seeing the improvements are there, I can see that, and that's why it hurts when you come off and you've not won the game.
“That's only natural, you know, because ultimately it's a results business. I said that many times last season when people were talking us up, they’re the margins in this league and you have to fight for those margins to come out on top of them.
“There is a knack to it, there is an ability to it and the successful teams are able to do it.”
Asked if he felt secure in his job, he said: “If you're scared of that, why would you come into it? It's never an issue. Honestly, you can't be worried and nervous about your job when you're a football manager.
“You just can't. You've got to think differently to everyone else, you know?
“Do you not get the drive to do this? Like, if you didn't want the hassle, you didn't want the stuff that comes with it, you don't do it. There's plenty of other things you can do.”
Heckingbottom believes things will click for his squad very soon, and says his players are getting frustrated with their results, and the subsequent post-match discussions.
“I think they're sick of it, I spoke to the players this morning and it needed me to watch it back and think about it, because there's no way I could have said it after the game because I was too upset, but that performance [against Watford] should have had people saying about how well they'd done.
“That performance should have had people praising the players for going there and playing that way. Instead, it's not.
“It's the same sort of chat that we're having and that's the frustration. But I want people to start talking well about the boys, because it's not a lack of effort, absolutely not.
“You can see the quality of the performance, and that should have been a performance and a result that had everyone singing their praises.
“So when you speak about drive, that's my own personal thing, shutting people up. But there's a lot of things, a lot of hard work has to go into us doing it because it won't just happen.
“If you perform the same way and get the result that we should have, you’re not asking that question [about whether it will click].”
He added: “There's evidence there that it is [clicking], apart from the result. And arguably, one of our poorest performances in the last four games, certainly with the ball, won us the game, against Blackburn.”