Preston North End striker Louis Moult playing a patient game as he recovers from long-term knee injury

Moult’s 2019/20 campaign ended on the third weekend of the season when he tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee.

He had surgery in the autumn to repair the damage and since then has been doing the necessary rehabilitation work.

At times that is slow and painful, the early stages focused on getting movement back into the knee and building up the muscles around it.

Louis Moult scores for Preston North End with a diving header against Wigan in August 2019 at Deepdale

Every gym session, every repetition of an exercise is progress though, when it comes to an injury of this nature and seriousness.

To use a now common football phrase, Moult was ‘back on the grass’ in the weeks before the shutdown.

He was out jogging on the Springfields training pitches under the supervision of the physio and fitness staff.

The big next step will be joining his team-mates for a full football training session.

That was something he had hoped to do a couple of times before the end of the season, ahead of a summer break and then a return to pre-season training in July.

However, the coronavirus pandemic will mean new schedules for every player, new timetables – this is not a time when concrete plans can be put in place.

If the season was to get going in July, that would come too early for Moult.

More realistic is the start of the 2020/21 campaign which will surely start a lot later than scheduled.

Moult has been missed by PNE this season.

Although his time at Deepdale has not run as smoothly as he would have hoped since arriving from Motherwell for £450,000 in January 2018, there have been some flashes of what he’s about.

There was a nine-game spell last season when he scored four goals, including the winner at Nottingham Forest and a late equaliser against Hull City.

In North End’s second game of this season – the striker’s first run-out – Moult netted a diving header in the 3-0 win over Wigan Athletic.

A week later he damaged his cruciate against Swansea at the Liberty Stadium.

From August 17, PNE have been an out-and-out striker down, Lilywhites manager Alex Neil having to chop and change the frontline as well as rely on goals from midfield and the wings.