Swansea City manager Graham Potter admits that his side’s victory over North End in his first league game at the Liberty Stadium was one that could have gone in the other direction.
Speaking at his press conference for the Swans’ trip to Deepdale this weekend, the former Ostersunds boss is well aware of the test the Lilywhites will provide for his in-form side.
“It will be the opposite of easy,” said Potter. “Knowing Alex’s team and the game we had here at home against Preston, when we won 1-0, but were fortunate to get a win – a draw was definitely a fair result.
“Their second half performance was a good one and on another day it would have been a different scoreline.
“Billy [Reid] knows Alex very well and I have a lot of respect for his team, the way they play and the type of mentality they bring to the game. We are expecting a really tough game.”
The Liberty Stadium chief believes the performance on that wet afternoon in August was, however, an illustrative one of his squad’s battling qualities, something that has remained evident throughout his first six months with the South Wales outfit.
“We got off to a good start,” he continued. “In the Preston match we missed a penalty and lost [their goalkeeper] and a lot of things could have happened where we could have felt sorry for ourselves, but the boys kept going.
“We went into the lead and managed to dig in when we were under the cosh – and they were the better team in the second half.
“I said at the time, that whilst you would like it to be free flowing, good quality football where you are creating chance after chance, there is also another side to the game that you have to have, which is when things aren’t going so well that you can scrap it out.
“We have had that pretty much all of the season – I can’t remember any time when that has been lacking. There are other things we have maybe been missing, but the spirit of the players, the attitude, the desire to want to play for Swansea City has always been there - they have been very good in that regard.”