Ryan Lowe wants Preston North End to move on quickly and reveals his league position aim

It was fifth vs seventh at the time, with the two sides level on points. The win gave the Lions breathing room in the play-offs and North End more work to do if they are to get into the top six.

There are still four games to go in the Championship season though and the PNE boss knows there will be upsets along the way and chances for them to gain ground, although his aim is a top half finish.

“I’ve not said we’re going to do this, we’re going to do that. Everyone is saying it a a must win game and yeah of course it is if we want to try and consolidate and stay in there but we’ve got four more,” he said.

"There are going to be lots of twists and turns of the next weeks, isn’t there? All we’ve got to do is try and give ourselves a fighting chance. As I’ve said all along, we want to try and finish in the top half.

"There’s a lot of excitement around because of where we are and we’ll see whether we’re three points off or still on the same points off the play-offs (Blackburn drew with Reading).

"We’ll just have to let this one go as quick as we possibly can because I didn’t think it was a bad performance, just the goals. If we can pick points up like we have done, we went three back to back.

"We picked up nine points in more or less a week and that’s massive. Come Wednesday and Saturday it will give us a rough idea of where we’ll finish.”

For the first time in the club’s history, PNE made four substitutes at the same time with just over 20 minutes to play. Liam Lindsay, Ben Whiteman, Robbie Brady and Troy Parrott were the men to make way for Bambo Diary, Ryan Ledson, Liam Delap and Alvaro Fernandez.

Lowe rolled the dice to try and get his side on level terms, at the time 1-0 down, and didn’t want to be wondering what if he had not acted.

“I just felt Lindsay looked a little bit tired, Whiteman we wanted to get Ledson on and give us something a little different, and Troy and Josh Onomah,” he said.

"That’s what you’ve got the subs for, to make them and we wanted to make sure we did that. Bringing Alvaro on to give us a little bit of freshness down that side. When you’re chasing you need to make those subs, there’s no point in leaving them sat behind you.

"I thought we were on the front foot before they came on and even when they came on, one long ball from a free kick that is probably a little dubious. It is what it is. You have to deal with those free kicks and we didn’t.”