Simon Grayson believes that Preston North End were only a missed chance away from leaving the County Ground with at least one point on Tuesday night.
An Andy Williams header from a fortuitous deflected cross with seven minutes to go unstuck the Lilywhites, but Grayson felt things could have been oh so different had PNE converted one of their own chances earlier in the contest.
Speaking to PNE.Com at full time the gaffer said: “I thought for large parts we played well, the game plan that we had worked.
“I think teams have come here and been too open and they are a team that do take chances right from the back – I have never seen a team take so many chances from the ‘keeper through the three centre halves and I felt that if we were solid we could counter attack against them very quickly, a little bit like what we did at Coventry.
“The only difference was than when we got into them counter attacking positions we never made the right decisions or the quality that the team have been producing in recent weeks was missing.
“We knew that there wing backs would push on hence why we had Chris Humphrey and Paul Gallagher in areas where there was space for them to run at and Chris was a constant threat in the first half.
“We were getting into good areas and the difference from over the last few weeks was that when opportunities came our way we didn’t take them.
“You could see with the way the game was going that you would still take a 0-0 but also we did think that we would still get another opportunity.
“It has been a demanding period but there are no excuses, I still thought we competed well and passed it well, we just didn’t take the opportunities when they came along and that is the fine line between winning matches and losing them.
“Joe Garner has had a couple of opportunities which over the last couple of weeks he has scored them, tonight it wasn’t to be the case.
“Gally got into a good position and decided to pass rather than shoot and Kyel Reid has miss-controlled one when it was there for him to shoot and score so thing didn’t go for us in that area but we get back up to Preston and recover for a tough cup game on Monday night.”
Speaking to PNE.Com at full time the gaffer said: “I thought for large parts we played well, the game plan that we had worked.
“I think teams have come here and been too open and they are a team that do take chances right from the back – I have never seen a team take so many chances from the ‘keeper through the three centre halves and I felt that if we were solid we could counter attack against them very quickly, a little bit like what we did at Coventry.
“The only difference was than when we got into them counter attacking positions we never made the right decisions or the quality that the team have been producing in recent weeks was missing.
“We knew that there wing backs would push on hence why we had Chris Humphrey and Paul Gallagher in areas where there was space for them to run at and Chris was a constant threat in the first half.
“We were getting into good areas and the difference from over the last few weeks was that when opportunities came our way we didn’t take them.
“You could see with the way the game was going that you would still take a 0-0 but also we did think that we would still get another opportunity.
“It has been a demanding period but there are no excuses, I still thought we competed well and passed it well, we just didn’t take the opportunities when they came along and that is the fine line between winning matches and losing them.
“Joe Garner has had a couple of opportunities which over the last couple of weeks he has scored them, tonight it wasn’t to be the case.
“Gally got into a good position and decided to pass rather than shoot and Kyel Reid has miss-controlled one when it was there for him to shoot and score so thing didn’t go for us in that area but we get back up to Preston and recover for a tough cup game on Monday night.”