The John Smith column: This sorry defeat against Millwall has left me questioning my support
Leaving the stadium after our 2-0 home defeat against Millwall, I can honestly say it was the worst that I have felt this season watching my team.
When the second goal for the away side came in the second minute of injury time, in my opinion it brought an end to what once had been a season of promise.
Any slim chance or hope that this team had of making the end of season play-offs is over.
To see the stadium empty like it did with less than a quarter of our fans left inside the stadium at the final whistle was a very depressing experience.
Unfortunately though, it is one I have witnessed many times before on numerous occasions.
The sickening feeling it gave me made me question whether almost 60 years of commitment that I have given to the club is really worth the expense and the negative emotions to see the same thing year after year.
Our record of five wins in our last 21 league games is a truly abysmal statistic especially considering two of those wins were against a cash-strapped Sheffield Wednesday side who have only won one match all season while other wins have come against strugglers Portsmouth and Oxford.
At the age of 76, I have to question whether Peter Ridsdale is the right man to take Preston North End forward. I would like to question why he has overseen the signing of Andrew Moran for more than £1m – yet he is a player who has only been used once since his arrival.
Also the Serbian Under-21 international Milos Lukovic, who we signed on loan in the same transfer window, could not even stand out in a reserve game with Stockport Under-19s – and he also has not featured in the last few first-team squads.
It mirrors the episode of big-money signing Jeppe Okkels and other players signed on the basis of statistics and videos who have turned out to be a a complete waste of money.
By this I mean the injury-prone signings of Izzy Brown and Connor Wickham, together with Matthew Olusunde and Bamber Bridge forward Jamie Thomas which we made in the summer of Frankie McEvoy's tenure.
In Saturday's game, Millwall's centre back Tristan Crama, who they signed from Brentford’s academy for £1m, kept our strikers Daniel Jebbison and Milutin Osmajic quiet.
In my opinion, based on that performance, he will end up going into the Premier League for a multi-million pound fee.
Millwall thoroughly deserved their win. Our old manager Alex Neil – another in a long line of managers I feel were not backed at Deepdale – has built a competent side and are now challenging for automatic promotion.
As for us, I fear that Paul Heckingbottom has run his course and is now losing his way here like a long line of managers who have not been backed sufficiently.
As I said after our heavy defeat at Middlesbrough, expecting him to produce a play-off challenging side on our budget is like expecting a farmer to cut his field with the horsepower of a Lidl bargain strimmer.
Maybe one day the whole scenario might change but as a man of my age – who was not fortunate enough to see Sir Tom Finney in his pomp or the 1964 FA Cup final – seeing my dream of watching my club play in the top-flight end like this, season after season, is what makes me feel sad.