‘Wishy washy’ - Ryan Lowe plans to set Preston North End players challenge after the break

Preston North End manager Ryan Lowe wants his squad to ‘reset’ over the international break, before getting back to work in the Championship and targeting improvement.

The Lilywhites went into the break on the back of three consecutive defeats in the space of eight days, to West Bromwich Albion, Leicester City and Ipswich Town. Preston are still third in the table after picking up 20 points from their first eight games, but the trio of losses - in which 11 goals were conceded - saw PNE hit a bump in the road.

North End will be keen to prove it was just that, with Millwall, Southampton and Hull City still to come this month. They are three tough fixtures for PNE to negotiate post-break and at Portman Road, Lowe spoke about his plan to push the players for more. A brief period away from one another comes first though and Lowe believes the chance to reset will be important.

"It is yeah and I've just said that to the lads,” said Lowe “A few will go away on international duty and hopefully they come back not injured - touch wood. We will definitely reset, yeah. There will be hard work going into us because we'll have two tough home games when we get back from the international break and I'm going to demand a little bit more.

When asked if he’s not getting too down after Ipswich, Lowe added: "I'm a bit disappointed, as you can probably see. Nobody likes losing and we've conceded 11 goals in the last three games. I want the defenders to feel that and Fred to feel that, which they do. And me, because we are a little bit wishy washy at the minute. We need to make sure we're either good or bad. I think the goals we conceded, we are disappointed in letting them happen. But, I've just looked at the table and we're still third in the Championship - which is a tough division. But, the quicker we get back to being solid, resolute and doing the basics right, the better we will be."

Lowe played down talk of last week being an opportunity missed for Preston to put a statement out to the rest of the league. Sitting in third, North End took on the top two placed sides in Leicester and Ipswich. And on both occasions, the hosts were too strong for the Lilywhites. At this stage, though, Lowe does not want to get involved with talk of PNE proving any promotion credentials.

"I don't want to put statements out,” said Lowe. “We don't want that. We just go out to win and get as many points as we possibly can. The two teams we've played are flying high. We had a spell of flying high, and we're just sitting behind them. So, we've got to take it on the chin, learn from it and be better next time we play."