North End boss Simon Grayson is looking for his players to show for 90 minutes what they showed for 30 against Chesterfield on Tuesday night.
The Lilywhites gaffer leads his side against a former manager of his at the weekend, looking to extend the Club’s ten month unbeaten run at Deepdale, but knows that they need to improve on their second half display against Chesterfield.
Speaking ahead of the visit of John Gregory’s Crawley Town he said: “We haven’t been beaten at Deepdale since December last year, so we are not struggling or on a really bad run, so the players and the staff together need to solve the issue psychologically.
“We are all in it together and all trying to achieve the same thing.
“I have so much faith in the players and what they can achieve. We are only a few games into a 46 game season and we all have every confidence that we will be up there at the end of the season.
“Incidents like Tuesday can trigger things and galvanise a group even more than they need to do. We aren’t going to sulk and feel sorry for ourselves because we’ve had a couple of bad results, we are going to work hard on the training field and we will get rewards from that.
“This football club has had a lot of positivity over the last 18 months and we will give up on where we have taken the football club in a short space of time; we have a good connection and affinity with the supporters and are going to take it forward.
“You haven’t got any given right to win any football match unless you play to the best of your ability and the players are working extremely hard to achieve it.
“I understand the supporters’ frustrations, but sometimes there is a bigger picture and we are working extremely hard. We know where we are going and there are going to be a lot of good times ahead.”
Tuesday saw the side race into a 3-0 lead with some excellent football and the manager only wants this in his team’s mind with forward thinking views.
“On Tuesday we got the reaction from the players that we wanted and asked for from last Saturday for 30 minutes and now we want the same again Saturday but for 90 minutes,” he continued.
“We can only affect what is in front of us, we can’t affect what happened on Tuesday. We can work on things that didn’t go right, but we would have done that even if we’d won 3-0 or 5-0.
“We always want to improve – I am never satisfied. It is gone now and we have to stick together as this Club is going to go forward.”
And with options at his disposal, including the pace of Robinson, Reid and Humphrey he knows that his side have attacking options, even if the opposition comes and tries to keep things tight.
“We have some exciting players. Kyel Reid is probably not ready yet to start a game, but he is getting very close and Callum Robinson showed glimpses of what he is capable on. Chris Humphrey should also be fit after injury kept him out the other night, so we will have some energy about us.
“You could see the energy in the first half an hour; we had a lot about us and this is why we have brought players like this to the club, because they are hungry to show what they can do.
“John has made Crawley hard to beat in the last few weeks and they have had some clean sheets. It will be one of those games where they get bodies behind the ball and we have to break them down.
“We have to have an intensity with and without the ball again. We have to get on the ball, move it quickly and take our chances when they come along, being ruthless in both boxes,” he added.
Speaking ahead of the visit of John Gregory’s Crawley Town he said: “We haven’t been beaten at Deepdale since December last year, so we are not struggling or on a really bad run, so the players and the staff together need to solve the issue psychologically.
“We are all in it together and all trying to achieve the same thing.
“I have so much faith in the players and what they can achieve. We are only a few games into a 46 game season and we all have every confidence that we will be up there at the end of the season.
“Incidents like Tuesday can trigger things and galvanise a group even more than they need to do. We aren’t going to sulk and feel sorry for ourselves because we’ve had a couple of bad results, we are going to work hard on the training field and we will get rewards from that.
“This football club has had a lot of positivity over the last 18 months and we will give up on where we have taken the football club in a short space of time; we have a good connection and affinity with the supporters and are going to take it forward.
“You haven’t got any given right to win any football match unless you play to the best of your ability and the players are working extremely hard to achieve it.
“I understand the supporters’ frustrations, but sometimes there is a bigger picture and we are working extremely hard. We know where we are going and there are going to be a lot of good times ahead.”
Tuesday saw the side race into a 3-0 lead with some excellent football and the manager only wants this in his team’s mind with forward thinking views.
“On Tuesday we got the reaction from the players that we wanted and asked for from last Saturday for 30 minutes and now we want the same again Saturday but for 90 minutes,” he continued.
“We can only affect what is in front of us, we can’t affect what happened on Tuesday. We can work on things that didn’t go right, but we would have done that even if we’d won 3-0 or 5-0.
“We always want to improve – I am never satisfied. It is gone now and we have to stick together as this Club is going to go forward.”
And with options at his disposal, including the pace of Robinson, Reid and Humphrey he knows that his side have attacking options, even if the opposition comes and tries to keep things tight.
“We have some exciting players. Kyel Reid is probably not ready yet to start a game, but he is getting very close and Callum Robinson showed glimpses of what he is capable on. Chris Humphrey should also be fit after injury kept him out the other night, so we will have some energy about us.
“You could see the energy in the first half an hour; we had a lot about us and this is why we have brought players like this to the club, because they are hungry to show what they can do.
“John has made Crawley hard to beat in the last few weeks and they have had some clean sheets. It will be one of those games where they get bodies behind the ball and we have to break them down.
“We have to have an intensity with and without the ball again. We have to get on the ball, move it quickly and take our chances when they come along, being ruthless in both boxes,” he added.