Earlier this season the Club's official match programme interviewed former player Warren Joyce.
Do you think the only coaching link between PNE and Manchester United is a father son relationship? You'd be wrong, as in charge of the likes of Welbeck and James at reserve team level is a former PNE legend; we speak to Warren Joyce about his 200-plus appearances for the Lilywhites.
Few would argue that life as a professional footballer is a back-breaking job, but that is literally what being a Preston North End player meant to Warren Joyce.
The dynamic midfielder spent five action-packed seasons at Deepdale, but it was literally hard graft for Joyce and his Lilywhites team-mates as they came to terms with the Club's infamous plastic pitch.
"What the surface did to people's bodies at the time wasn't right, we were guinea pigs," Joyce recalls as he reflects on North End's eight year experimentation with plastic.
"You enjoyed playing there, but I only left because of the plastic pitch. I got a fracture in my back and I thought I was finished, how I played any more games after leaving Preston I don't know, but I was never the same player, I know that and that's mainly down to the pitch.
"There were several other players who suffered the same thing, it was great while we were there, but it didn't do a lot for our health. It did a lot of damage to our bodies and to our long term futures.
"Nobody can see pain, but I knew what I was under at the time and it was touch and go when I left Preston as to whether I would ever play another game. I managed it, but I was never the same player and I was in a hell of a lot of pain, after leaving Preston it affected me for the rest of my career."
Quite ironic then that at a time when the Lilywhites were playing on a hard, almost concrete surface, their manager at the time was more likely to be comparing his players to shrubbery!
John McGrath was the Preston manager who brought Joyce to Deepdale from Bolton Wanderers in October 1987. And like every former North End who played under the charismatic promotion winning boss, Joyce will never forget working for McGrath.
"Meeting John McGrath for the first time was an experience in itself. He was a larger than life character, he was like John Wayne, he came into a room and he took over. His team talks in the dressing room would have players wanting to run through brick walls for you, he gave you the right feeling.
"He had some great team talks. He compared the team to his garden once, the conifers were the defenders, the lawn was the midfielders and the forwards were his roses which everybody had come to see. At other times we were a bowl of soup and it was minestrone and not tomato because minestrone is interesting and has all different things that bring it together.
"With myself he used to tell me that he wanted me to win it and give it to Mooney, stand there and wait for him to lose it and then win it back and give it him again. He said that there were piano-pushers and piano-players and he said that I was a piano pusher and Mooney was a piano player, but he said that somebody has got to push the piano onto the stage otherwise they can't play it.
"A couple of seasons later when I started scoring goals he actually said on the TV that 'Joyce used to be a piano pusher, but he has learnt to play the piano now as well'."
The Lilywhites had just been promoted to English football's third tier when Joyce joined McGrath's side. A season of consolidation was followed by North End having a real crack at promotion in the 1988/89 campaign, Sheffield United and Wolves were the division's big-guns but North End's home advantages proved to be a double-edged sword for the Club.
Fantastic home form on the plastic got McGrath's side to the Play-Offs, but playing on grass became almost an alien concept to Joyce and his Preston team-mates.
"It was a good season, it was a good team and we narrowly missed out on it and perhaps that was due to our away form. We never trained on grass, so playing away your legs felt to heavy and the game felt so slow, it was really difficult playing away from home. The advantage we had when we were playing on plastic was completely lost when you went to play away from home.
"Big Sam was just one of several big characters in the team, everywhere you looked there was a character. Mick Rathbone, Bob Atkins, Browny [David Brown] and Kel [Alan Kelly] were both characters in their own right, but at different ages. Mark Patterson, Gary Brazil who was an extremely good player, Tony Ellis, Nigel Jemson who even though he was young was a character - they all brought something different to the team.
"Brian Mooney had an unbelievable amount of skill, he was a good lad, but also a complex lad. We used to get on well together, we travelled in together on a morning and people would look at us as though we were chalk and cheese. Mooney was like George Best in all ways, on and off the field, but he came from a quite close knit family back in Ireland and people don't realise what it is like if you get taken out of that environment and you are left to fend for yourself, it is not easy."
Sixth position in the old third division proved to be the pinnacle of John McGrath's career as Preston North End manager. A little of six months later the popular character was sacked and Les Chapman took over the managerial reigns, ironically it was a time when Joyce moved from piano pusher to piano player. The midfielder grabbed 13 goals and was named the Club's Player of the Year for the 1989/90 campaign.
"He said that I was a piano pusher and Mooney was a piano player."
Warren Joyce remembers his former boss John McGrath
Joyce has mixed emotions on his goalscoring exploits that year: "When my fortunes went up in terms of scoring goals, the team's fortunes maybe went down. You stop doing the donkey work for all the others, the added responsibility of getting forward and creating more meant that you did more things in other areas, but it also exposed weaknesses elsewhere. It showed areas where you were filling in for other people when you were doing the piano-pusher's job.
"Les was a good fella, different from John McGrath, but you didn't want to let Les down because he was such a good coach and he had been a tremendous player. It was a feeling for him that you didn't want to let him down because you genuinely liked the fella as a man. He'd always been helpful, he was a good coach in the dressing room and a really funny character. He talked a lot of sense in football, but I think he had it a lot harder because the team never had the finances at the time and the quality of the players wasn't as good as the quality from the year before. We'd sold people like Gary Brazil, Tony Ellis had gone, Mark Patterson had left, Moons [Brian Mooney] had gone so Les was fighting to do well with lesser quality.
"Les was just unlucky that he never got backed financially to bring players in and make his own mark on the Club. He certainly knew football and if he had been able to bring characters in like himself I am sure he would have done very well.
"The pitch took its toll on the team and he had lost five or six of his main players from the year before, the team which had done well and that's difficult for any club. It's certainly difficult for a manager to impose himself and I don't think he was given the time to bring the kind of players which he wanted to bring in."
Twenty years on from what might be regarded as the pinnacle of Warren Joyce's playing career, the 45-year-old is once again a regular visitor to Deepdale. Joyce has more than a passing interest in North End's exploits, especially as his role as Manchester United's reserve team boss sees him looking after the long term prospects of Danny Welbeck and Matt James.
"I have to say that Deepdale has changed so much since I was a player and that's one of the things which is a little bit sad. You see a few familiar faces and then you walk into the ground and it doesn't seem to be the same place, it doesn't feel like you have ever played there. The drive up to the ground is the same, but once you get there it is totally different.
"I've been quite regularly; since I have been back in England I have watched a lot of Preston because we tend to have lads on loan in the Championship so I have got to a lot of games over the last couple of years. Obviously there is a bit more interest now with two of our own young players there."
From John McGrath's rosebuds to Manchester United's budding stars, Joyce's career in some respects has come full circle and you can guarantee that the one-time Club captain will be looking down enviously as today's players grace the lush turf of Deepdale this afternoon.
