Simon Grayson conceded that the dressing room was ‘devastated’ following Coventry City’s late equaliser at Deepdale.
The Lilywhites looked set for three valuable points, but Franck Moussa’s unstoppable hit in the 97th minute; after four minutes of time was initially allocated, was enough to snatch a point for the visitors.
Speaking of the incident after the match, manager Simon Grayson said: “It is a bitter pill to swallow when you concede in the 96th minute, four minutes was the allotted time, the referee said, I have been in to see him, that he added the other extra two minutes on for substitutions and not getting the ball back when they should have done for a certain throw in from the crowd.
“But our stopwatches said it was six minutes and 17 and that extra 17 seconds has obviously cost us two points.
“The dressing room is devastated like we all are, there was a few strange decisions right throughout the course of the game today for both teams and the supporters vent their anger as well.
“It should have been game over; I suppose if you are going to concede a goal that late in the game, then the lad has absolutely hit a worldy and you can’t do much about the strike to be fair.”
In another controversial decision, North End goalscorer Kevin Davies – who notched PNE’s 7,000th Football League goal, was sent off with three minutes of normal time remaining for a foul which was interpreted as two footed, although both Simon Grayson and his Coventry counterpart Steven Pressley thought different.
“It is how you interpret things these days,” said the gaffer.
“He has gone in for a tackle and the lad has nutmegged him and it has probably looked like it has ended up in a two footed tackle, but both myself and Steven Pressley at the time said it should have been a yellow card, but it is how referee’s interpret them.
“We could be here all night talking about different decisions on different games and referees, but I have already been banned once this year already and I’m not going to go and do it again.”
Preston played well for the majority of Saturday’s contest in front of more than 10,600 fans and Grayson was adamant that there were plenty of positives to take from the afternoon despite the two dropped points.
“I thought we were very bright first half, our game plan worked, we stopped them from playing, we put balls in the box, worked the back four extremely well, Declan has not had a shot to save the whole game, so everything was panning out how we wanted it to.
“Second half, we needed to take care of the ball a little bit and they came back into the game a bit because they are a good team.
“They have got some threats, they are an adventurous team, but obviously we are disappointed to have the sucker punch and that is obviously twice Coventry have scored in injury time against us and we have dropped four points against them.
“I thought we played some good stuff first half, passed it around well, we mixed it up and went long up to the strikers who were a handful, passed it into the midfield and the wide areas and a great ball in from David Buchanan and Kevin Davies is obviously on the end of it.
“It gave us the opportunity to build off it and we hand some close opportunities, but obviously everyone will be talking about the injury time equaliser for them.
“The big thing in any game is getting the second goal, at one-nil you need that second goal to just take the edge out of the game to see it through, but lots of positives, we have played well against a very good team who have got some good results.
“We made them look ordinary, we worked hard as a team, we passed it well at times, so lots of positives.
“It is obviously a dressing room that is very down at the moment and feels like it has been on the end of a defeat, but we just said to the players to remember the positives of what we have done and somewhere over the course of the season, we are going to get an injury time equaliser or winner somewhere and that’s how it pans out sometimes.”