Darren Ferguson celebrated his 38th birthday with three points and a great team performance as the Lilywhites defeated Sheffield United at Deepdale thanks to goals from debutant Matt James and Jon Parkin.

The Lilywhites were on the front foot from the off and put on a display that left their manager in a fine mood to enjoy his big day: "It was a perfect present," he said. "It was a magnificent performance from start to finish. To a man the players were excellent and I was really proud of them.

"From the off they were at it, and on the front foot and all credit goes to them; they were outstanding."

North End took a deserved lead through James' deflected opener, but in the first half they had many chances to come in with an unassailable lead: "We should have been further ahead. We had a stonewall penalty denied, Parky hit the bar, Sedge was close to putting us 1-0 up. We had a lot of chances and played some good stuff in the first half.

"You rarely get through a game of football without coming under a spell of pressure, but in the second half we put our bodies and heads in where we needed to and I thought we thoroughly deserved the win.

"We said at half-time that we may come under a bit of pressure, but we stuck together and all credit goes to the players, because they dug people out when they had to and on top of that we played some good football - it was a pleasing night."

The work rate was evident throughout the team and this was one of the most pleasing aspects for Ferguson: "We have to play with energies. In football now you have to play at a tempo and I thought for his debut I thought Matty James was outstanding. It is wrong to single out anyone really, but Jon Parkin was unplayable at times tonight and was outstanding, but it was a very good team performance.

"Football is a team game, It is not about 11 men anymore and those who came back in tonight did really well. Obviously people aren't happy when they are left out, but if I get the right response then they will be back in."

A reshuffle to the pack saw players in their 'normal' positions and the manager felt this had helped: "I would say we have had too many players out of position, but we had a much better balance to the team tonight and that showed in the performance.

"We have set a barrier in terms of level of performance tonight and we have to try and sustain that now. The effort has been there, but the energy and the tempo tonight was the key and it was a really good win."