North End make the trip to Teesside at the weekend, looking to end Middlesbrough's 100 per cent home start this season, where they have so far won three out of three at the Riverside.
Home wins over Sheffield United, Burton Albion and Graham Alexander's Scunthorpe United in the Carabao Cup earlier this week have given Garry Monk a positive start to life with Boro, but he acknowledged to his local paper, so have the Lilywhites.
“They’ve had a very good start,” he told the Northern Echo.
“I know Alex [Neil] very well, and he’s a very good manager. They’ve started really well, and like every game, we know it’s going to be difficult, very competitive.
“We had a good result on Tuesday, which was a good response to losing against Forest. We want to take the positives from that and finish with a good result before the international break.”
In terms of team selections, there are plenty of options for the former Leeds United boss, however, summer recruit Martin Braithwaite will not be involved on Saturday as he continues to recover from injury, the former Toulouse man not set to be available until after the international break.
Lewis Baker, Ashley Fletcher, Grant Leadbitter and Fabio staked claims to be involved against North end with impressive dsplays against the Iron in midweek, but Monk is likely to revert to the bulk of the side beaten 2-1 at Forest last weekend.
Meanwhile, the former team-mate of the PNE boss still has a 'couple of bits of work' to do ahead of Thursday’s closure of the August transfer window, adding: “We’ve done the bulk of our work, we’ve been very good with it.
“I think we’ve had a successful window. We’ve had more outgoings than we’ve had incomings. We’ve done that smartly and brought a lot of money in and moved a lot of players out, as well as recruiting new players.
“We’ve got a couple of bits of work we’d like to do, but that’s with the club and there is a lot of hard work going on behind the scenes. There are a couple of positions where we’d like to try to strengthen the squad. But it’s in the club’s hands and things are being worked on.”