Daniel Johnson believes the Lilywhites can use tonight’s defeat as a learning curve with the focus now turning to Gentry Day on Saturday.
DJ started tonight’s game as North End’s oldest outfield player tonight as a youthful North End side went toe to toe with Leeds United who went into the game on the fringes of the automatic Play-Off places.
“It just shows how young our team is and how hungry we are” said the 26-year-old. “I thought we were terrific at times today; we fought hard and played the ball forward when it was on.
“These games are always hard because both teams want the ball and both teams will do their upmost to win it back and there was never a breather.
“We’re going to learn from these games, we’re young and we’ve still got a long way to go and we’re only going to learn and get better.
“It’s important that we go away today, take a hard lesson and learn from it. Tomorrow we’re off and I’ll be spending it with my family and then back to work on Thursday where we have another big game and we know how big it’s going to be for the supporters, so hopefully we can put things right on Saturday.”
The tide turned in the match when Ben Pearson was sent off five minutes into the second half for fouling Patrick Bamford through on goal and Johnson acknowledged that that’s the nature of the game at times.
Johnson added: “That’s the game changer us going down to ten men. It’s always going to be difficult for us going down to ten men against a quality side like Leeds. We tried to go toe to toe with them all over the park and I thought until that moment, we were right in it.
“The whole season we’ve worked on going toe to toe with every team and if it’s not good enough on the day, we hold our hands up. I thought up until Ben getting sent off, we tried to make every single ball of theirs 50 50.
“I thought Ben’s first yellow card was a bit harsh, a few of their lads were putting in challenges that were just as bad like the one on Josh Earl from Luke Ayling but they weren’t getting yellow cards but we’ve just got to get on with it. That’s part of the game, you’re going to get good days and bad days like that. We’ve just got to put it behind us now and go again on Saturday.”
Watch Johnson's full interview on. iFollowPNE now.