Sepp van den Berg sorry for leaving Preston North End fans feeling let down

The Lilywhites lost out 2-0 after goals from Keshi Anderson and Gary Madine.

Van den Berg made a point to go over to the PNE faithful after full time and seemed to apologise to them.

Despite the disappointment he felt having not won the game on such a big occasion, the Dutchman feels it is always important to show thanks.

He said: “Personally, I feel like I gave everything.

“You just want to win those games for them. You want to win every derby game and then go over to them.

“We have a disappointing feeling and then we go over to them and of course they are disappointed too.

“It’s always difficult when you lose but I feel you always have to go over because we need them to back us up, and they did that today.

“Hopefully they can keep doing it because it helps us.

“Everyone wants to win, everyone also knew it was a very big game.

“We knew it from the start but it’s very frustrating that it didn’t work out from the start.

“About the passion and everything, that isn’t the problem. We just need to fix something and we’re trying to work it out. I just really wanted to win.”

The magnitude of the fixture was not lost on the PNE players, with the on-loan Liverpoool man well aware of the importance of the game.

He felt it could have been a different game had the Lilywhites taken their chance to equalise through Ben Whiteman.

He said: “The two biggest games of the season are this game and the Blackpool home game, to get beat 2-0 is very frustrating.

“We started in a 3-5-2 then we changed the formation and you could see it just wasn’t good enough.

“For their goal I got dragged inside and then their left-back came up. Everyone was too late and they scored. I saw him shoot, he didn’t even hit the ball well and it rolled in at the near post.

“Getting a goal back means it’s a game again but them going to 2-0, it’s a different game in the second half. In the second half I thought we started very well, created a big chance as well, and then I don’t know.”