On the road again this time into deepest South Yorkshire, Barnsley to be exact to the grand stadium of Oakwell, great ground always good atmosphere and always large away support from us when we go there. Toby Tykes lot have had a decent season back in the Championship beating us early doors, lie in 8th place at the moment so still in with a good shout of the play offs although they seem to have been off loading a few decent players recently, with the likes of Winnall, Bree and Hourihane going off to pastures new being replaced by Mowatt and ex one time loannee Matty James who in my book is a decent player although been cursed with a series of injuries which have curtailed his career was sidelined for a year with cruciate problems and has gone on loan to Barnsley to get him match fit again. Barnsley came second to Wolves 3-1 on Tuesday having Mowatt sent off in the process. Their games at home seem to be high scoring affairs they score a few and let in a few, so could be in for an entertaining game. Thopusand plus should be in attendance in the away end expecting a far better performance that was put in on Tuesday, only doubts Welsh, Vemijl who needs a hernia operation, probably be changes from Tuesday may even be a debut for Boyle in the back line but we need to up the performance. Having suffered only our fourth defeat on Tuesday in 21 games find it astonishing that people on other forums lose the plot about changing the manager, considering our resources compred to others we are doing well and if people cannot be bothered going to home games then we will have to cut our cloth accordingly, people of Preston get out fom you armchairs and go and watch them.
A fair result today in a game which fizzled out long before the end, both sides being let down by poor final balls when in good positions. A bright sunny day with the sun blinding everyone in the away end. A decent away following of 1269 in a gate of 12200 almost saw North End take the lead in the first minute when Hugill got in down the left hand side sadly his pass failed to find the well placed Gallagher. Barnsley were also having luck down both flanks but their crossing and shooting was generally in the inept class with every single cross finding the arms of Maxwell. When they did get through on one occsaion they were denied by an excellent bkloke by Huntington when a home forward was well placed to score. McGeady had a cross deflected narrowly wide, (he is a really frustrating player), a Makienok header was easily saved by Davies. On the stroke of half time, we were denied a clear penalty when Hugill was slam dunked by a defender in the box, not given by the increasingly erratic Mr Langford. The second half was poor, a couple of shots by Armstrong one of which was narrowly wide from about 40 yards, a McGeady cross which just evaided Hugill otherwise it was stop start, with injuries hampering any chance of fluency. North End could have snatched it at the end but Davies denied Hugill with a decent save after a scramble from a corner. The highlight of the entire afternoon was a North End fan managed to buy an Iceberg Lettuce which was proudly displayed with the flags that we had brought. Still never lost at Oakwell, get another chance to keep the record next season when both teams will again meet in the Championship. Barnsley 0 Preston North End 0 Att 12200 Barnsley head coach Paul Heckingbottom: "I was pleased with how we coped with their threats but I didn't feel that we did enough to win the game. "There were not enough crosses into the box, not enough efforts on goal. "I said at half-time I was conscious that I didn't want Preston to grind us down, because the team they picked and the message from Simon (Grayson) at the start of the game was that he wanted a tougher, more aggressive performance. "I don't even speak about the top six. It is about winning the next game, so it has not even entered my head. Preston boss Simon Grayson: "There are plenty of games still to go and there will be so many twists and turns from now until the end of the season. "We have aspirations to try and get there (the play-offs), but obviously we will need to turn these draws into wins if we are going to make up the ground on teams that are up there already. "Neither team really had that cutting edge to go and break down two resilient defensive performances today. "These games just hinge on a little bit of magic from somebody, and from our point of view we never really had that little bit of quality.
