Alex Neil made no excuses for what he described as an ‘unacceptable’ performance in the Lilywhites 3-0 defeat at Luton Town.
The Preston North End boss was strong in his assessment of his side’s display, describing it as the worst of his time as manager.
“I’m not going to make any excuses whatsoever,” he said. “We were extremely poor and the better team won.
“Luton deserved to win the game. We didn’t do well enough, the first goal we give away the ball too cheaply and then after the second they dominated the rest of the game.
“It’s probably as poor as we’ve been since I’ve been here, really disappointing. They got the better of us in every department.”
And after the same starting XI played extremely well in the 3-0 victory over Middlesbrough on Wednesday night, the gaffer admitted it was a shock.
“I didn’t see it coming if I’m being honest,” he continued. “I think we’ve been in good form, I thought our last game, we played great against Middlesbrough. We went with the same XI because of how well they did.
“We knew what was coming; the pitch wasn’t great, so we knew we were going to have to turn it, make it a bit sort of messy at times. If I’m being brutally honest, they played the exact same way we did, except they did it a lot better than us.
“I thought that we started poorly, I thought we had two or three decent opportunities before they scored and then after that, they get a goal, which was really straight forward - they score, and from that point onwards, I thought they were the better side from then until the game finished.”
Alex made all five of his changes by the hour mark, but he did not feel they made any impact on the game: “In the second half, we make some changes, try to chase the match, but it didn’t improve us, and we got dominated in my opinion in every department.
“The simple fact is, against Middlesbrough, we competed better than Middlesbrough, we ran harder than Middlesbrough, we passed the ball better, we were more competitive – that happened to us today and that’s probably never happened in my memory to my team since I’ve been here in terms of competitiveness.
“We’ve played against really good sides that have outplayed us, that can happen when you’re playing really good teams. Today, Luton did everything better than what we did, certainly second half, and that’s extremely disappointing.”