Preston's Premier League looked a pipe dream at half-time, but at full-time it was back to reality - Supporter John Smith believes top-flight football is on for PNE
At the half time interval on Saturday when we were a goal down to Hull I was of the belief that I would have more chance of pinching a mint out of the Queen’s handbag than seeing Premier League football at Deepdale next season.
This especially so with two tough away games at WBA and Fulham coming up in the next seven games.
However, without getting too giddy after the second half turnaround which saw us grind out a massive victory I believe the dream is still very much alive as this important win maintained our position in the play off places with just 11 games of the regular season left to play.
Should Alex Neil achieve our ultimate goal of promotion he would be crowned as the undisputed King of Deepdale – being the best manager I have seen here in modern times.
The 46 game Championship is a demanding gruelling physical challenge and one in which it is impossible to play well every week and at half-time we were struggling at Deepdale again for the second successive Saturday after a mainly uninspiring first half.
Although we were handicapped playing against a strong wind we failed to put Hull under any more serious pressure and it was no major surprise when the visitors who had not won in their last seven league outings opened the scoring shortly before half time as our Achilles heel of conceding goals from high crosses was exposed once again.
We did not really get going until midway through the second half after an inspired tactical switch by the manager which saw the introduction of Jayden Stockley and Alan Browne saw us finally starting to ask questions of the opposition defence.
Unlike the previous Saturday defeat to Millwall the switches changed the course of the game with Stockley and Browne combining well to create the goal which put us in the lead after we had levelled four minutes earlier through a Paul Gallagher penalty.