Preston North End 3 Watford 0 (02/10/2024)
Today at 01:46 PM
1- There’s definitely an old school feel to the evening.
There’s a danger in glorifying the (real) bad old days. They were, after all, the bad old days for good reason. We had dropped into the third tier in 1996 because we were shit. People didn’t come to games because we were shit, and because the other things, the other reasons for coming to games, weren’t appealing enough.
Without wishing to rehash the tirade about catering at the Vic from Saturday, this is a consideration worth bearing in mind presuming that the retention of bums on seats is a priority of any kind. In this respect, at least, there’s nothing old school about Deepdale where the serving kiosk is well stocked with decent looking food. There’s Neck Oil on tap for those that don’t have a bloody long drive to navigate later, and the staff are unhassled and friendly.
Admittedly, contributing to the ease of service and unhassled ambience of the staff is the fact that yes, the coaches have arrived but no, there’s still nobody here, which takes us back to where we started. No criticism implied, Deepdale midweek is a bloody long journey to what, until last season, had been an unproductive stopping point. Neither Dave nor I have ever seen us win here in numerous (if, obviously, often simultaneous) visits, all factors which contribute to this being picked for this season’s annual Stupid Away Trip.
But the empty concourse with folk dotted around in a thoroughly un-thronglike manner echoes Chesterfield, Wrexham, Stockport, Crewe from what is now called “back in the day” but really wasn’t that long ago, surely. Admittedly I’m misremembering to a degree, there probably wasn’t a concourse to speak of at Saltergate… nonetheless, the nature of a crowd changes from a heaving mass of anonymity when full to slightly awkward and bashful when sparse, if peppered with noisy defiance (at least in the first half, we’ll get to that).
There are plenty of faces here who’ll remember those days though. Briefly, beforehand, Pete, Dave, Rich and I were in the same corner of the same restaurant before confusing staff by playing musical chairs as half the guests left and half stayed. This could have been 15, 20, 25 years ago and more which is a fine thing in itself that transcends shitty 3-0 defeats. Paul and Grace are here too… Grace isn’t old enough to be an old fart like the rest of us, but has nonetheless been well brought up as you’d expect, and from a very early age. A highlight of the Boothroyd promotion season was Pete bringing his then infant daughter on a beer cruise to Carrow Road which had a powerful and disarming effect on other travellers. In the ground there are further faces Of A Certain Age… Ollie is there for one thing, other old faces share greetings in the concourse. Amanda ISN’T an old face of course, she still looks about 12… but we recall the trip to Amsterdam (also here and here) that we both enjoyed 24 years ago, so perhaps she’s older than she looks.
As an aside, the restaurant – Marino’s – is stunning. Dad’s advice before the trip was to consider how life might have turned out had he taken that job in Preston early in his career. Can guarantee I’d have spent a lot of time in Marino’s. Had it been there prior to 2011.
2- Oh yes, football.
The second half will be a disaster, obviously, and we’ll get to that. But things are Wrong much earlier. For one thing, there’s an unhealthy, not to say reckless sense of expectation… one such prediction is made in the restaurant by a correspondent who will remain unspecified but they were far from the only one, similar bullishness evident on line. One only has to glance a little way up the M1 for a case study in the novel challenges inherent in a sudden sense of expectation, complacency being one.
And the performance feels complacent. Saturday was significant in that it stemmed a wobble, a fine performance against a strong opponent that got a monkey off our backs and set us up for another positive run of results. But… you’ve got to follow that up, it’s not a given. From the off this performance was less focused, less disciplined, less urgent. As if we felt we’d done the difficult bit, and that Preston away was somehow a lighter touch. This division above all divisions doesn’t let you get away with that. Tom pointing out pre-match that Preston finished above that last season indicated that he was aware of the risk but slightly alarming that it even needed saying.
Significant in the team selection were the selections of Imran Louza in the midfield, and Kwadwo Baah from the start in the central attacking role. Both decisions will have been influenced by the enforced absences of Tom Dele-Bashiru and Daniel Jebbison, each nursing knocks. Both performances would be significant. TDB is far from perfect, but Pete – who revels in is new-found old codgerness, a persona that he may have been waiting his whole life to be able to inhabit – quickly grumbles that he slows everything down in a side and environment that really doesn’t benefit us by being slowed down. He may not have used that many words, but he wasn’t wrong. The frustration, as Dave chips in, is that you know he’s far better than this. That a player of his ability ought to grab most Championship games by the throat and shake them until their teeth rattle. And yet. And yet. Not quite “Imran Louza baby, so why don’t you kill me?” but so frustrating.
Baah, meanwhile, has surely merited a start but his evening isn’t destined to be any more successful. Indeed, such is the contrast between the fearless, irrepressible Baah that we’ve seen off the bench and the tentative, limited player that we witness this evening that you have to wonder, particularly in the context of neither Bayo nor Rajović convincing in the role, whether the problem is our array of forwards or the unrealistically big ask that this job in this team implies… the need to hold the ball up, link play whilst playing a lone role but also being the team’s spearhead and goalscorer.
Admittedly, the evening would, one suspects, have gone a whole lot better if, when put clean through after 10 minutes after some rare slack defending from Preston, Baah had managed to beat the advancing Woodman. The game, the evening, and his own in particular, pivot on the outcome… though it has to be conceded that he looks anything but a natural striker in that moment.
3- Preston show all the hallmarks of a side struggling for form. Their opening is positive but fragile, as if dressing room bravado has got them going but will dwindle in the face of minimal resistance. Certainly, if Baah’s chance is against the run of play then we have a good spell of possession thereafter without creating an awful lot, as if Preston’s early bluster was finite. Kayembe is bullishly active, Larouci and Ebosele are getting into advanced positions.
But there isn’t a focus. Long beyond the end of the half, Baah’s thought processes are transparent as the opportunity to break down the right presents itself and his legs are desperately asking permission to run into the channel just as the voice behind me bellows at him to “stay in the f***ing middle”.
And buoyed in turn by their own success in keeping us at bay, Preston seize control again; Bond is forced into a fine stop to keep out Osmajić, Ogbonna is on several occasions asked to perform critical surgery to stem an attack, with Mattie Pollock and James Morris similarly fully employed.
The half ends all square. In all honesty we’ve been no worse than OK in that we’ve done some good things, including the best move of the half which sees Chak and Larouci combine on the left for the latter to put in another peach of a cross that reaches Ebosele attacking the far post – he gets underneath it and shovels over, a bad miss but a fine move that yields warm applause, albeit tempered by the suspicion that we’re on our way to the fourth nil-nil we’ve sat through against the Lilywhites since relegation two and a half years ago.
4- We’re not. Quite obviously. Blows are traded at the start of the half; Sissoko comes close with a far post header, Preston are re-invigorated by the interval.
The home side get the break. To reiterate, much as this was a poor performance rightly punished in the end, a Watford break could conceivably have resulted in a similar scoreline in the other direction; Preston were brittle, we needed a groove to settle into. Instead a move down their right saw Osmajić released on goal; Bond did a rather less convincing job here than Woodman had in the first half, dropping to minimise the shooting window as an afterthought as the ball went under him.
In truth, Preston get several breaks here. Whether Osmajić should have been involved given his recent biting charge is one question (albeit we’d have been incidental beneficiaries). Whether he was onside quite another (TV angles, WhatsApp correspondents report, say not). Whether Ben Whiteman should subsequently have stayed on the pitch (WhatsApp VAR again) another still, perhaps the worst transgression of an irritating homer of a show from a ref that did similar at Bramall Lane with even more incendiary results.
None of which matters a damn. Things happen. Balls bounce against you. We get breaks sometimes. The other lot got breaks here. All you can do is try to deal with it and we utterly, totally failed to do so as Preston’s shedding of their angst and inhibitions saw them surge into full control of the game and gallop off into the sunset with it. A supine, worrying collapse on the part of the Hornets, scant reward for the dwindling few in the away end that stuck it out (Dave had half-heartedly suggested an early departure – for me, the only thing more stupid than driving to Preston to watch an average game of football is driving to Preston to, you know, not watch an average game of football).
Whether our evening was entirely helped by the timing of the substitutions directly after the goal, in particular the removal of Ogbonna for Bayo as we changed shape, is questionable. They were, at least, clearly planned rather than panicked reactive changes given that both Bayo and Ryan Andrews were stripped and warmed up for immediate introduction.
If 36 year-old Ogbonna could be relied upon for 90 minutes twice a week he’d still be at West Ham, one suspects. No point grumbling if he needs to be “managed”. Nonetheless, withdrawing him at this point rid us of our most stabilising influence just as stability was precisely what was required.
Instead, Preston went further ahead… both the second and final goals had their origins on our left but were concluded in far too much space on our right with both Osmajić (again) and McCann (whose finish was magnificent, far better on screen than it looked from above in the ground) in far too much space. We looked forlorn, beaten, the more so when, in between the last two goals, Vakoun Bayo managed to squander another chance on being put through by shooting narrowly wide. With the game over our sudden urgency was almost infuriating, Andrews twice clubbing shots goalwards for Woodman to paw away, Louza finally progressing the ball forwards (having, in all fairness, shown for every pass all evening). Not nearly enough, nor soon enough.
5- By 12.30am we’re nearing Corley services, where Dave had left his car pointing Southbound. Helpfully, Motorway signage – having kept us informed of multiple lane closures and obstacles to that point – warned us well in advance that there was no access to Corley off the motorway (nor from them back onto it, as we noted on the hapless trundle past). A loop back and Dave traversed the pedestrian bridge and drove out via the staff entrance, a move I replicated Northbound to limit the extent of my doubling back only to find the A14 closed also. Touchdown chez Rowson at 02:37.
None of which mattered, or ruined another fine trip. As ever, if you allow the football to dictate the success of a journey you’re screwed, and taking advantage of timetabled opportunities to spend time with fine people (and Dave) in remote towns on the other side of the country remains a rare privilege.
But as for the team… that number 9 question needs sorting if we’re to even aspire to anything more than mid-tableness this season. If the last two away (League) games are anything to go by we’re going to need that home form of which Tom is rightly proud to hold firm too… it’s likely to get its sternest examination of the season so far this Saturday.
See you there. And at Deepdale next season, obviously.
Yooorns.
Bond 2, Ebosele 2, Larouci 3, Pollock 3, *Ogbonna 4*, Morris 3, Sissoko 2, Louza 2, Kayembe 2, Chakvetadze 3, Baah 1
Subs: Bayo (for Ogbonna, 54) 1, Andrews (for Ebosele, 54) 2, Sema (for Larouci, 63) 2, Vata (for Baah, 83) NA, Ince (for Kayembe, 83) NA, Dwomoh, Tikvić, Porteous, Marriott
