North End boss Simon Grayson didn’t care it took his team 94 minutes to score, he was pleased just to make progress in the EFL Cup.
The Lilywhites progressed to the second round thanks to Eoin Doyle’s late poacher’s goal and after the game the manager was pleased with how his side had gone about the game.
“It doesn’t matter when you score, as long as you do score, get the winner and make it through to the next round,” he told PNE PlayerHD. “We did what we set out to do; we played quite well tonight, passed the ball around very well, had some good chances and on another day we could have won by a considerable margin.
“We had to be disciplined without the ball and then move it quickly when we had it and overall I thought it was a good team performance.
“When you have Pringle and Gallagher out wide, you know they are both going to turn back onto their strong feet and put balls into the box and if you have a couple of strikers, you can cause problems. You also know that they will also tuck in and make it difficult for the opposition and get into pockets and areas that can hurt the opposition.
“We picked a team to win the game; if you’d have asked me on Friday what the team would have been, it would probably have been different to what we picked tonight, but given the disappointing performance on Saturday, I wanted to get it out of their system tonight and one or two showed that they meant business.
“Overall I thought it was a good game to watch for the supporters and we can be pleased that we have earned a place in the second round.
“We want to win as many games as possible. We wanted to win on Saturday, but that didn’t happen. We picked a strong team tonight and we had one objective, to get into the next round and that’s what we have managed to achieve.”
Eoin Doyle was the hero on the night and the gaffer was pleased with his impact, as well as that of his three substitutes: “I thought he [Eoin Doyle] was good tonight. He played the No.10 at times, the link up play between him and Garns was good. They both looked a threat and we had good options on the bench as well.
“I have said to the players all along, be disappointed if you are not in the team, but make an impact if you come on and I think all three who came on tonight made an impact. Callum, Jordan and Chris affected the game, and ultimately Chris set up Doyler for the winner,” he added.
click here now to sign in and watch the full interviews.You can watch the full interview now on PNE PlayerHD, as well as hearing from match winner Eoin Doyle –