REVEALED: How Preston North End’s players have returned to training in great shape

Preston’s players to be back at full throttle and ready to resume the 2019-20 Championship season.

The North End squad returned to training on Monday after spending more than two months away from the club.

The football season was brought to a shuddering halt in March due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 virus.

Since then the players, like everybody else within society, have had to spend their days at home under lockdown.

Only allowed to venture out to shop for bare essentials such as food and medicines, the players were also limited to exercising away from home for just one hour per day.

Undoubtedly, that will have affected their fitness levels, but with strength and conditioning coach Tom 
Little providing the players with programmes to follow, they have managed to keep in shape.

And with the Government relaxing restrictions in recent weeks to allow people out of the house for unlimited exercise, the players have been able to step things up ahead of this week’s return to training.

While the squad will need time to recover full fitness, Peter Ridsdale – advisor to North End owner Trevor Hemmings – believes it will not take long before they are up to speed.

A date of June 20 has been pencilled in for the restart of football, which gives North End’s squad a period of just over three weeks to get themselves ready and raring to resume their play-off tilt.

Alex Neil’s men’s first game back is scheduled to be against Luton Town at Kenilworth Road, then they have a further eight games – four at Deepdale and four away from home.

They are currently in sixth position – the fourth and final play-off spot – in the Championship table, a point ahead of seventh-placed Bristol City and four behind Nottingham Forest, who are fifth.

“Tom Little has been doing the players’ fitness programmes which they have been following all through lockdown,” Ridsdale told the Evening Post.

“They have come back to training on Monday looking in great shape.

“It’s not like coming back in for the first day of pre-season training.

“When they come back in for pre-season training, they will have been on holiday and won’t have been working for a good few weeks.

“This is different. These lads have been following fitness programmes throughout the whole of the lockdown.

“So clearly they are in better shape and I think in general we are all delighted with the way they have come back.

“We have got nine games to go in the normal season, we want to get as many points as we can and let’s see where that takes us.”