It's an important eight days in North End's season, with three tough games in the Coca-Cola Championship. After a hard fought point at Watford on Saturday, Preston now have two back-to-back home games, starting with Stoke City on Tuesday night.

At Monday's press conference, Alan Irvine previewed the visit of the Potters...

Gaffer, it was a very tough, physical game at Vicarage Road on Saturday, how are the players feeling after that battle?
It was but everyone has trained today. We had one or two bumps or bruises, Callum Davidson felt his hamstring tighten a bit at half-time the other day but he played for the whole of the game and he was a bit stiff yesterday.

On the subject of Callum, he picked up his tenth yellow of the season on Saturday and he will now have to suffer a second suspension of the season.
He's got two games unfortunately which is a blow for a Callum and a blow for us because he is important player but these things happen. He felt a little bit hard done by on the booking, you can't appeal on bookings and from where I was stood, it looked like a booking at the time.

There hasn't been too much time to recover between Saturday and Tuesday. How has that altered your approach to training?
They've trained really well on Monday at a high tempo; we didn't train for too long because we were trying to save the players energy. We trained hard for just over an hour, the quality was good and I was delighted with the session.

In some respects the way Stoke are expected to play will be very similar to that of Watford, with a very direct approach.
They have got Rory Delap who has an enormous throw and it gives you a problem to deal with, they have a lot of big players and they have a lot of imagination and invention in their set plays. On top of that, we can't underestimate what they are like in open play because they are a very good team. They have players that can hurt you and certainly players that are well known at Deepdale.

It's clear to see that we have been defending a lot better over the past few weeks but how do you think we have been doing at the opposite end of the field?
We not creating enough chances and the chances that we are creating we aren't taking. But we'll keep working away at that and it's important that we break with good quality and make good decisions when we come out of that defensive shape. Obviously if you don't score goals then you don't win matches and that is something that we are trying to address but we work on creating chances and finishing drills on a daily basis, so the players are working on it.

We talk about it every time there's a Tuesday night Championship fixture, but we still have that fantastic unbeaten home record at Deepdale, and everyone wants it to continue.
I hope so; I certainly don't want it to stop because it's a fantastic record. I think it's quite common, we had the same feeling at Everton where night games under the lights produced a different atmosphere produced a different atmosphere to the Saturday afternoon games and it was something that seemed to work very well at Goodison. I wasn't too surprised when I heard about the record here and I'd say most teams do quite well in night games at home.

Darren Carter returns tonight from suspension, are you thinking of throwing him straight back in?
I haven't picked the team yet but if the players get in the team and play well then there is every chance they will stay in the team. The only thing is, it's my decision if I think they played well or not!

Darren Carter is obviously back in contention and he has been playing well. It's a big decision for me whether I bring him back or leave things as they were. It's the same in other positions; I'm looking at the whole thing and looking at the way in which we can get a result against Stoke.

Sean St Ledger came on as a substitute in the latter stages of the Watford game and played in midfield. Does that give you another option, when and where required?
I don't look at Sean and see him as a central midfield player. If you look at what happened, I responded to Watford putting DeMerit on and I was aware that if we were still in the game, either winning or drawing then the chances are they were going to put another big player on. It was important that we had to get big players of our own on and at set plays they might have as many as seven players who were a threat in the air in our penalty area so I had to make sure we could cope with that.

It was a response and I knew we needed to cope with the next long throw or the next corner and that was why I did it. I'm not now thinking that Sean is a creative midfield player!

Now Stoke have gone top of the league and face the media hype, do you think they will feel the pressure slightly tonight?
We are fully aware of how Stoke are doing and they deserve a lot of attention and a lot of credit. I don't think that will distract them in any way, I think they will be focused and be very determined to keep that top spot and a spot they deserve by a lot of very good performances. It's a very difficult game for us whatever attention they happen to be getting.

Don't forget to have a punt on Tuesday night's match. Click here to go to North End's official betting website pnebetting.co.uk