Notts County are unbeaten away from Meadow Lane, but manager Graham Westley is not too impressed by this stat.
The PNE chief is more concerned with his own side’s form ahead of the clash with the Magpies at Deepdale on Tuesday night.
“I don’t tend to get too impressed by any opponent,” he said in his pre-match press briefing for the game. “I don’t think it pays to get too impressed by them. I am impressed by our current form; I am impressed by our improvement. I think we have come a long way this season and records are there to be broken.
“They have had a good run of games where people haven’t got to grips with the way they play. I’ve seen them play and people talk about parking buses – they play a 4-6-0 system!
“They make it very difficult for sides and then they have good pace, as well as Judge, who is a terrific player. He picks up the ball and runs at you from deep and they’ve got the pace of Zoko and Arquin who can hurt you as well.
“They have good options in the forward areas, so they can counter attack and then they literally park a 4-6-0 in front of the goal and try and counter attack off the back of it. If you are not careful you can get hurt by it and it can get very frustrating.
“Everyone at the football club has to be ready for a team that will sit in, get tight and try and make it really, really difficult for us. They’ll let your centre halves have it all night long and try and make sure there is no space for your attackers to play in. We know that and it is up to us to deal with it.”
Coming up against another side who will be ready to park the proverbial bus in front of the goal, means the manager will be working hard on the training ground to have a number of plans of how to deal with it up his sleeve.
“We will need to replicate the circumstances and talk through the options and permutations to deal with it,” he continued. “We will develop our patterns, so we have the right ones needed on the night. As the game goes on and evolves, we need to make sure we have plan ‘B’ and plan ‘C’ in place, so we can change the game if we need to.
“We are relying on the squad taking on board all these different ideas and going and executing it and sometimes you can go in with a game plan and someone hasn’t quite understood what is required and the circumstances and we have a lot of that.
“We have lads like Jeffrey, who have never played League One football before, so he doesn’t know the opponents. There a big difference between showing him videos and actually playing against them. Until the player actually plays against an opponent, he is never really quite sure.”
For more from the manager log on to PNE Player, where in a near ten minute interview he talks about the three ‘Ps’, preparation, penalties, patience! Click here to sign up or log in now.