'A huge summer' - What Paul Heckingbottom said on Preston North End transfers after avoiding relegation

Preston North End manager Paul Heckingbottom says the club’s business this summer will be vital to next season’s performance.

The Lilywhites were dragged into a relegation battle in the final few weeks of the 2024/25 campaign and avoided relegation on the last day, at Bristol City. As the PNE boss mentioned at Ashton Gate, the work pretty much starts straight away for next season. Heckingbottom hasn’t had a pre-season or summer transfer window at Preston yet and knows just how significant recruitment will be.

“It's going to be a big summer, a huge summer,” said Heckingbottom. “I think this league next season is going to be the toughest it's been. The money is going to be frightening when the teams have come down again, who are big and have got parachute payments. The teams who are coming up have probably got the most money coming up out of League One, as well.

“It's going to be such a strong, strong league for lots of different reasons. Probably, how well we do will be determined on how well we perform in the market this summer. You never have that (funding to do as much as you want) as a manager. The money is the money, but the backing to do the most with that money, yeah, definitely, 100%. The work starts now.”

“That’ll all evolve...”

It’s been stated that around 10 new signings could be made at North End this summer, with four loan deals ending and a hand full of contracts expiring. Heckingbottom has been open about the budget he will have to work with; PNE are not going to be spending transfer fees on every single one of their additions. The North End manager anticipates a mix of loans, frees and permanent recruits.

“Whatever we need to do to get the best squad,” said Heckingbottom, when asked how he envisages it being split up. “It's going to depend, isn't it? Peter had a list of players, or had conversations, but it's on hold, you can't do anything. If you get your ‘Plan A’ then fantastic, but it generally doesn't happen, so you have to be ready to move and just go with the flow of that to get the best possible squad.

“That's why I say loans are going to be important. Free transfers, we can afford a small pool (of them). So, yeah, we're going to make some signings - as many permanents as possible, the right character, the right player and then we'll certainly be bulking up the squad with as good a loans as possible. And we want to avoid just getting numbers... we want to make sure we can get loans to try and improve the XI.

“But again, the competition for those players is immense. If you stand here right now, there's probably five faces I wouldn't have a clue who it would be. That'll all evolve in the summer. There's a core there we need to add to. I think we've shown lots of good characteristics throughout the season, and I keep saying the same things every week, where we need to improve, so that's it.

“It's pretty simple, really. We can't lose what's been good about us, in terms of how competitive we've been, how dogged we've been. I'll accept the odd bad one, we're going to get that, but so long as our levels of performance are really consistent then it's easier to manage and deal with problems. If we're (not) a team like that and you never know what you're going to get, I think that's tough.”

Your next PNE read: Preston North End heading abroad in pre-season