Preston North End skipper John Welsh believes that Tuesday night’s 0-0 draw with MK Dons is two points dropped in the race for promotion.
The midfielder was speaking following PNE’s 12th draw of the Sky Bet League One season and he admits that he is frustrated by that stat in general and by the latest notch to that tally.
Speaking exclusively to PNE.Com, Welsh said: “In my opinion it is two points dropped, the lads are disappointed, but it is a point away from home.
“I think these are games we should be winning; I felt we dominated the game.
“You could argue they have had the best chance when Jack King has cleared it off the line, but that is more down to mistakes on our part rather than through good play.
“We’re disappointed that we couldn’t get three points, but it is a point away from home and every point counts.
“Me personally, I’m a bit frustrated with the amount of draws.
“We are coming in and saying we should have won games and it seems that we are saying that a lot this season.
“We want to turn the draws in to wins obviously and I think when you look at the game as a whole, we were the dominant ones.
“We were the only ones who looked like we were going to score, we were trying to score and trying to win and I think when you see their players saying in the last five minutes ‘let’s dig in’, it shows that they have been under it for a while and were sort of hanging on in the end.”
In a match that will not live long in the memory, the game boiled down to one chance a piece, Keith Keane hitting the post for Preston, before Declan Rudd was helped out by Jack King, who headed off the line to spare the ‘keeper’s blushes after he mistimed a rush out of his box.
And speaking of those chances, Welsh continued: “It was great defending by Kingy, Dec has come in and thanked him but that is what we do, we are a football team and we pull each other out when we need it most and that’s what Kingy has done.
“He has headed the ball off the line and he is a big old fella, so it wouldn’t have been hard for him to fill the goal!
“Keano has done everything right, he has gone across the ‘keeper and on a better day it hits the post and goes in but it wasn’t to be.
“Joe Garner says that it has actually hit the inside of the post and gone out, that’s the luck we had tonight and it is just disappointing that we could not get the win.”
Something which didn’t help the match was the state of the stadiummmk pitch, a surface which was not conducive to free flowing football, although Welsh was not willing to accept that as an excuse.
“The pitch was poor, but that doesn’t affect what we do, obviously it is the same for them,” added the PNE No.19.
“They like to get it down and pass it, so it probably affected them more than it did us.
“It didn’t matter about the pitch, it was flat enough to pass the ball on, obviously there was a bobble or two on there but the pitch wasn’t a problem in my eyes.”