Manager Simon Grayson said that the defeat to Fleetwood was a wake-up call, irrespective of the fact they played 60 minutes with ten men.
The Lilywhites had to play two-thirds of the game one man short after the decision of match official Jez Simpson to send off Joe Garner for an altercation with Steven Schumacher.
“Going down to ten men so early is never easy and it made a non-spectacle of it,” admitted the gaffer after the game. “We can’t use that as an excuse, it was a learning curve and a reminder of what we still need to do – a stark reminder of what we need to do better.
“It is staggering why they couldn’t use some common sense. I don’t understand why three officials also missed the fact that Steven Schumacher pushed Joe Garner in the face and should have got sent off too.
“I am not one for asking for people to be sent off, but Steven admitted he had done it to me and it just made a mockery of the whole decision.
“The letter of the law should sometimes be overruled by common sense.”
Assessing the game itself, it left the coaching staff with a lot to think about: “There is plenty to work on, disappointed that we conceded four goals.
“I thought we actually started the second-half quite well when Keith Keane had a good opportunity and before you know it they have had their only two shots in the first 15, 20 minutes of the second half and you are 3-0 down,
“There are aspects that I thought we did ok in, but there are certainly aspects of individuals and collectively as a team we need to work on.
“Maybe today with results like this, is the kick up the backside to individuals and to everybody to say that we have got a lot of work still to be done for when we are ready for the Wolves game.”
There were some bonuses with Kevin Davies, Will Hayhurst and Keith Keane all getting their first run outs of the season.
“Kevin showed was he is all about, some nice touches, we will benefit from that so he will be ready for the Blackburn game on Tuesday night.
“The only ones we didn’t have today were Jeffrey, whose thigh was a bit tight; Humey just rolled his ankle on Friday, so it is not going to be anything major and obviously Beav with his knee.
“The news back on Beav is that he is going to be out for a couple of weeks which is not good news, but it could have been a lot worse, so we will just have to suffer that, but hopefully he will be back before the start of the season.”