Simon Grayson is looking for Neil Kilkenny to seize his opportunity at Deepdale and influence the team and his own future in a positive way during his loan spell.
The new North End No.37 put pen to paper on a loan deal on Thursday morning that will keep him at Deepdale until at least January 5th and his new/old boss, admitted being delighted to teaming up with his former Leeds stalwart again.
“He’s a player I worked with for a couple of years at Leeds,” the manager told PNE Player. “He is a midfielder who likes to get on the ball, likes to make the team tick – get control of the game, pass and be quite creative.
“I felt it was an opportunity to get another player in, in a different role to what we already have and felt it was the right time to do it.
“We looked at the squad and felt that we needed somebody in there and we keep adding better players to the squad and hence why we went to do this.
“Neil fell out of favour at Bristol City, not really for footballing reasons, and we seized an opportunity to bring him in and he was delighted to join.”
Kilkenny, 27, goes straight into the reckoning for the clash with the league leaders Leyton Orient on Saturday and the manager feels his experience can play a big part for the Lilywhites as well as improving his own chances of jetting off to Brazil with Australia next summer.
“He has 300 plus games in the Premier League, Championship and League One, plus international caps and he has the hunger to show people he wants to be in that Australian camp and if he does that, it means he is doing well for us,” continued Grayson.
“He has to grasp the opportunity that is available to him.
“We wanted less numbers, but a little bit more quality in the squad and hopefully that can influence results over the next few weeks and Neil can be a part of that.”