'People could' - Preston North End star determined to prove one thing against Leicester City and West Brom

Preston North End striker Will Keane says any ‘on the beach’ signs within the dressing room would get stamped out by the players.

The number seven pops into the press room at Euxton on Thursday morning, with North End’s season done and dusted in terms of a play-off push. But, there are two games to play - neither of which are remotely easy, on paper. First up, it’s potential champions Leicester City at home, before a final day trip to promotion candidates, West Brom.

On a personal note, Keane’s first season - in his second stint as a PNE player - has gone positively, though he believes he could be sitting on a higher tally than 13 goals. But, 16 goal contributions in 36 league appearances is not to be sniffed at and Keane has been at the heart of some of the Lilywhites’ most memorable moments this campaign.

Beating Blackburn Rovers away is a highlight but individually, his two goals against former club Ipswich Town and goal at Huddersfield Town stand out - as well as the dominant performance at Coventry City, who were swept aside 3-0 by a rampant North End. Missing out on the play-offs hurt Keane, especially after the mood in camp after that February victory over the Sky Blues.

“It was a really complete performance,” said Keane. “We took a lot of belief from that. They are a team who’ve been in and amongst it for the last couple of seasons, so to go there and play as well as we did - we thought we were right in the mix. I think we need to look at the whole season, once it’s over. There have been moments; we started right up there then dropped off. It is making sure we can keep consistent, but I think you’re always going to have ups and downs. To get back to a position where we came close, is credit to the lads. We had a tough couple of months but managed to come through it. It’s a shame we fell away, but we gave it all of our effort.”

There have been high and lows for North End over the course of the campaign, but the season is in danger of finishing on an extremely poor note. Defeats to Norwich City, Southampton and Queens Park Rangers has Preston staring down the barrel of five straight defeats, which PNE’s number seven is absolutely determined to prevent happening.

“Yeah, definitely, that is what we’ve spoken about this week,” said Keane. “Even though, after the Norwich defeat, we knew it’d be a massive task to be in the mix, we didn’t want the season to just fizzle out. I think that is the frustration, that people could maybe look at it and label it as us not being bothered now - but that is not the case. If lads were like that, it would get stamped out straight away. All the lads here are top professionals and you want to win any game.

“The frustration with QPR is that it wasn’t through a lack of effort or trying. We felt like we were off it. Especially after the Southampton result, we wanted to put in a much better performance. There’s never any finger pointing or blame culture; we are all in it together. We were second best too much and there’s no excuse for that. We knew what to expect, because they were fighting for their lives. And we weren’t up to it, which wasn’t good enough to be honest.

“That made it three losses in a row and the next two are tough games. You don’t want to finish with five defeats, so the lads are aware of that and we want to finish on as much of a high as possible. We’ve looked at recent years - where Preston have finished in the league and on what points. We’ve still got our own targets of progression and to do that we need to pick up points from the last two games.”