Striker Jordan Hugill is ready to fight for his place in Simon Grayson’s side next season after missing a lengthy spell last season through injury.
After a successful end to the 2014/15 campaign for the 23-year-old, he is ready to build on that by working hard on his fitness throughout the summer in preparation for pre-season.
“I’ve not been enjoying myself as much this summer because I’ve just been working so hard! I’ve had a few little holidays but the last three or four weeks I’ve been working hard.
“I’ve hired a personal trainer and I’ve been doing sessions with him, doing boxing sessions, just to make sure I’m in the best shape coming back for pre-season. I still won’t be looking forward to pre-season but hopefully it won’t put me as far behind as I was last year!
And Jordan is hoping that his hard work can put him in prime position to compete with last year’s prolific strike force in Joe Garner and Jermaine Beckford.
“I wasn’t really as big a part of the success last season as I would have liked ot have been through injury, but I want to be a big player for Preston.
“I want to be in there every week and be battling with the likes of Joe Garner and Jermaine Beckford to keep them hot on their heels so they know I’m there and I want to play.
“I am just going to work hard and get my head down and then what will come will come.
“I get on really well with both of them, and it’s just brilliant to see them commit themselves to the Club with their new deals and now we just all can’t wait to get going again.
It was clear from his celebrations at Wembley just how much the promotion meant to the Middlesbrough-born striker, and the excitement was only heightened after the release of the 2015/16 fixtures last week.
“The one fixture I was looking for ended up being the one we’ve got for the first game!
“I can’t wait to see the crowd and the atmosphere. It will be our first game in the Championship, I’m pretty sure we’ll have a good crowd and Middlesbrough will hopefully bring a big following as well so the whole day is going to be unbelievable.
“I’ve already had some ticket requests and it’s weeks away! But I am looking forward to it.
“Hopefully I can go one better than last time we played them and score two or three! But we will see what happens over pre-season and go from there.
And the frontman admits that after seeing the full fixture list and the teams that PNE will be facing next season, the reality of playing in the Championship really sunk in.
“It all feels a bit more real now I’ve seen the fixtures when you’ve got the likes of Nottingham Forest, Derby and Leeds and big teams like that.
“You’ve got teams that have just come out of the Premier League in this division and when I was looking through our fixtures when they came out and I got a bit excited just looking at some of the teams we will be playing.
“They are the teams you see on TV and the teams you’ve read about and now we are in the same league and we will be playing against them so it hit home and now I just want to get going.
“The history behind a few of the clubs in the Championship is unbelievable and just to be competing with them is unbelievable. It’s what we deserve because we’ve got the history about us and we are a massive team.
“Preston North End is a massive club and we are now back where we belong and hopefully we can do well this season.”