Alan Irvine won't be rushing to write off Preston's Play-Off chances despite the disappointment of losing at home in the crunch Easter derby with Blackpool.

The two sides came into the game with differing aspirations - Blackpool seeking survival and Preston seeking the culmination of a long term revival - but though the result was the wrong one from a PNE perspective, one reverse doesn't end the hope that prevailed prior to the early kick-off.

"It depends what everyone else does," was the reply when Irvine was inevitably asked whether he felt the chase was all over during the post-match press conference. "We'll keep going because we've still got a chance. We've worked very hard this season to be in the position that we're in, so we'll keep working hard.

"We're obviously relying on other people to slip up, but we were doing before today's game in any case. We'll just keep on going, and I'm not giving up in any case.

"It's a long hard season, and the Championship is very, very tough. It's very difficult to go through the season and be consistent in winning week in, week out - you tend to find that lots of teams have spells where they don't do so well.

"What's the reason for that? There could be many reasons. I don't like to make excuses, and I don't want to start harping on about a lack of options and things, but all I'll say is that our lads have worked extremely hard to be in the position we're in, and they worked really hard today as well. I can't criticise them on that basis. What cost us was that we didn't execute passes well enough.

"It was a typical frantic derby and you would expect that to be the case. The thing about derby matches is that obviously a lot of times you play with the heart, but you also need to play with the head. That's very easy for me to say - which I said before the game, and it's very easy to say now - but you need a clear head and you need to show composure in order to make good decisions.

"I think the thing that we got most wrong today was that we made many, many poor decisions. Having got into good positions, we didn't make the most of those positions. I was disappointed with our work in the final third.

"I felt that we dominated the possession for the majority of the game. Blackpool were a threat on the counter attack, but we certainly had enough of the ball to cause them more problems than we did.

"We had two good attempts in the first half when Ross Wallace hit the woodwork and Stephen Elliott had one instinctive effort tipped away by the keeper, but that's not enough when you have that amount of possession.

"We've worked all week on how to get into good positions and hurt teams who are set up the way they were to sit back and hit us on the counter, and that involves making the right decisions on when to pass, when to run, when to cross. We didn't do that well enough.

"We were in good possession prior to their goal too - we were on the attack when we gave the ball away cheaply. They counter attacked and got the goal."

North End had a supposed equaliser disallowed when the visitors' Shaun Barker ended up in a heap on the floor - with Irvine giving the assumption the referee gave the foul against whoever contributed to that. On why Sean St. Ledger's header wasn't allowed to stand, Irvine admitted:

"I've had a look at it again, and I don't know what it was disallowed for, to be honest. I haven't asked the referee - I don't see much point in doing that. It certainly wasn't Sean St. Ledger - he didn't foul anybody. Jon Parkin was certainly fighting for space with Barker, but who was fouling who, if anybody was fouling anybody? I certainly don't know."

Defeat at home is a shock to the system, with Deepdale the resting place of the best home record in the division. The manager is hoping that a good finale will ensure that remains the case come the end of the campaign, adding:

"We're delighted with the home record we've got, but we certainly aren't complacent about that because it has taken a great deal of effort in order to get those results. We certainly weren't banking on the fact that we were going to win our remaining home games.

"We hoped we would, but obviously we've lost this one. We've got two left, so I hope we win them."