The John Smith Column: Alfie Devine's scorcher is a goal-of-the-season contender
In my many years of travel to this neck of the woods, it is not often that I have seen Preston win a league match against Derby County especially in their new-ish stadium, Pride Park.
In fact, apart from the season when we beat them twice behind closed doors during the covid panademic in 2020-21, before Saturday we had only recorded one victory in our last 24 league games with them either at home or away.
Therefore prior to kick off, I personally was not over optimistic that Saturday would be the day that we would win on our travels for the first time in seven months.
I had no need to worry though as the 1,800 travelling faithful who made the journey to the East Midlands were rewarded for giving their team some great vocal backing throughout the game with a strong North End performance and a welcome three points.
On our journey home up the M6 despite the dire weather conditions outside with the driving rain literally bouncing off our car roof, inside it I felt like a beaming new bride constantly smiling while posing for her wedding photos in the summer sun in the garden of a country hotel.
Last week, Lewis Dobbin scored what I considered to be a candidate for our goal of the season. This week it was the turn of another loanee Alfie Devine to add his name to the best goal shortlist.
His unstoppable scorcher of a shot rocketed into the top corner of the net for what turned out to be the only goal of the game just before the half-hour mark.
This season we have signed some younger players with more pace who also have the ability to run at the opposition defenders.
In our last two games we have scored two high quality goals by doing this which I think is a great testament to some careful planning done by the manager Paul Heckingbottom and his recruitment team.
They have brought in some players of high calibre during the summer.
I thought that in the first half we were far better than the home side and controlled the play for the majority of it and on another day we could of gone into the break with a healthier lead.
Similar to the Middlesbrough game but to a lesser extent we had to fight a rearguard action for large chunks of the second but this week we managed to see the game out and get the three very welcome points.
It is still early days but our lofty position of being fifth in Saturday evening’s league table is an illustration of my view that we now have a better blend and more balanced squad than we did last season.
Hopefully this away win is not a one-off and we can continue to get a few more during the rest of the season.