Tim Mercer’s Preston North End Fans’ Panel verdict: Emil Riis – the boy Dane good!

All 10 points gained so far have come from outside of Deepdale and in terms of an ‘away table’ we sit top above Swansea and Bristol City.

If only, if only we might be saying to ourselves but the grind of a 46-game season will no doubt start to even things out over the next two months or so.

Huddersfield’s manager pulled a tactical flanker on Alex Neil with an opening formation nothing like their normal set-up in a bid to stop the infamous North End press.

Neil admitted this after the match and so it took a while for Preston to adjust and get into the game. By that time the Terriers were a goal up, with their tactic of quick balls over or around that press giving them just reward at the third time of asking.

By the end of the first half however, the visitors were back into their usual aggressive away form and Scott Sinclair will probably still be wondering how he failed to hit the target from inside the box a little past the half hour mark.

After the break the Lilywhites really took the game to their hosts and went 2-1 up inside two minutes early in the second half. Both goals were scored by Alan Browne and both had the mark of quality on them.

How the men in green didn’t add to their winning margin is a bit of a mystery, with some clear cut chances either being subject to superb last ditch tackles, a brilliant save and a probable missed penalty when Brad Potts was through and about to pull the trigger.

What really excited me as a fan though was the performance of our new striker Emil Riis.

He was quite simply superb throughout the match and on another day would easily have bagged a brace, including his shot against the underside of the bar deep into the seventh minute of stoppage time that was by then annoyingly two minutes over the signalled five.