Preston North End goalkeeper Declan Rudd is looking to tap into the experience of new goalkeeping coach Jonathan Gould, to help him continually improve.
The Lilywhites’ No.1 has had a couple of sessions with the former PNE stopper and is enjoying being able to share some of the former Scottish international’s own know-how.
Speaking to iFollow PNE at Springifields Dec said: “It is good. He brings a lot of experience from his playing career and that is only going to help me and the other keepers.
“Experience is the one thing you can’t buy and he has been in the positions, he has made the mistakes and had the games where everything has gone right and he knows exactly where a goalkeeper will feel in pretty much every state of the game.
“It is good to have that sort of knowledge you can tap into whenever you need to.
“With who he has worked with and where he has worked, he has gained a vast amount of knowledge and that is something that will help any player, including the outfield players, if they need to know anything.
“Having him in and around the place with what he has done and where he has been, is only going to help and improve the squad and I am looking forward to him improving me.
“I am the type of person that is always looking to improve. Regardless of whether I play the best game, I still want to do better the next week and it will be a good thing for him to come in and help me achieve that.”
The 28-year-old custodian feels that after the opening day clash in the Lions’ Den, the team have learnt their lessons and will look to challenge each other, with the competition for places.
“There was a lot being said after the Millwall game and it just goes to show that things can quickly turn around – one game doesn’t make a team good and one game doesn’t make a team bad,” he continued.
“We have put the Millwall game to one side, changed the way we have gone about things and the performance against Wigan was one of the best I have been involved in since I have been here.
“Every player was on their game and that was the same on Tuesday night in the cup. It just goes to show the quality of the squad we have got, that with 11 changes being made, we can still go out there and put in a great performance like that.”
With two wins, seven goals and back-to-back clean sheets, with two separate teams in the last week, the Diss-born man is now hoping his side can build upon the platform they have created, especially after a positive performance on their last trip to the Liberty Stadium.
“Last year we went there and proved that we are the type of team who can go these so-called bigger clubs and really take them on.
“Although we lost the game, if you take the goal out of the game, we were probably the better team and deserved at least a point, if not to win the game, so we have to take the confidence from that and go there with the belief that we can get the three points, because moving on from this week we can really get some momentum going and hopefully we can put a run together and get some points on the board early, rather than starting behind and trying to catch teams up.
“If we can get some momentum and get ourselves up there, we can be in and about it. In the run of 12 or 14 games we went on last year, we were going into games knowing that we weren’t going to lose and results seemed to take care of themselves. That is something that we should work hard to do and when it is there, really take advantage of it.
“If we can get that run going early, it is a very long season and it makes teams look at you and think ‘they really mean business this year’ and I think that is something we have to do.
“There are going to be teams that are going to be really strong this year and we have to make sure we are in about them from the off; we don’t want to be playing catch up,” he added.