Paul Gallagher is hoping that Preston North End can get back to winning ways as soon as possible and insists the hard work must continue as North End target a successful end to the campaign.
North End suffered their first defeat in six against Millwall last weekend, but Gallagher says the players want to bounce back with a positive result against the Tigers.
North End’s No.12 told iFollow PNE: “If you look at the run we’ve been on, it’s been a very good run.
“We wanted to win at home [against Millwall] and keep the momentum going, but hopefully it’s only a short disappointment and we can bounce back with a positive result on Saturday.
“You look at it in both ways – if we went on to gain a point or three points it would have put us in a much better position, but it gives us another chance and an opportunity because other results did go our way.
"There’s plenty of points to play for, this is the business end of the season and we’ve just come off the back of a good run so the only way we can do it is to try and start another one.
“The weather played a big factor in the last game, it was torrential rain and wind, every bit of weather you could ask for, but we don’t want to make excuses, we want to go out there and try and try and put on a good performance and get the points.
“Sometimes you’re not too bothered about the performance, you just want the points at this stage of the season. We’re looking forward to Saturday and trying to get the three points.”
Gallagher admitted that, following the Millwall defeat, he had to take responsibility as a senior player in the North End ranks to ensure heads remained high.
He explained: “There’s a few of us in there, me, David Nugent and Tom Clarke, we’ve been around the block a few times so we understand that sometimes you need to say to the younger lads to keep believing in what we’re doing. We’re here on merit, it’s not a fluke, we deserve to be here.
“But I think the team we’ve got here is very grounded, they’ve all come from good backgrounds and they want to do well for themselves, they want to be successful, so it makes a little bit easier. They understand the game now as well, they’ve been at this club a number of years so it’s about getting back on the pitch and doing things right.
“You look at the run we’ve been on – in some of the games we’ve played well, some we didn’t. Wigan we played really well for stages, Stoke in the first half we weren’t that good but we got the points, so it just shows at this stage of the season it’s all about trying to get the points.”
After last weekend’s round of games, North End sit in sixth place in the Championship, with just six points between Leeds United in second and seventh-placed Bristol City.
Gallagher said that every game carries more excitement with the end of the season nearing ever closer but added the first priority was to get back to winning ways on Saturday.
“It does [carry more excitement] because it’s so close, and where we are in the league,” he said.
“Our aim is to be in that top six so we’re on track, but like I said before there’s plenty of points and plenty of games to play for. The most important thing is getting three points.
“You look at some of the results, Barnsley beat Fulham 3-0 away, so anything can happen in this game. All we have to do is focus on ourselves and try and get back to winning ways as soon as possible.”
Whilst North End are in the play-off positions at the moment, Gally stressed there is still a lot of hard work to be done to stay there.
He continued: “The standard’s been set, for most of the season we’ve been in that top six, we even climbed to the top of the league at one stage so we know what it feels like to be inside that top six, and we want to try and stay there.
“We put pressure on ourselves every day to do well and probably on the outside people don’t look at us too much, which is nice, we’re under the radar, but we know what we demand from ourselves. Like I say, we’re on track to get to where we want to go but there’s still a lot of hard work to go.
“We can’t look now and think ‘we’ve done alright’, we need to go again. When you’ve got that feeling of something special that could happen, you need to kick on and drive on and make sure it does. Every player in there to a man is capable of doing that and that’s want we want to do.
“You feel the excitement around the city, people get excited and rightly so because we’re in a great position.
“But there’s a lot of big clubs in this division that have spent a lot of money, and a lot more than we have and for us to be up there fighting against them and being in the position that we are is a credit to ourselves, the staff and everyone involved.
“We can’t take our foot off the gas now, we need to keep looking forward and try and stay in that top six as long as we can. All the way to the end of the season would be ideal, but as I said there will be a lot of twists and turns before that. It’s about what we do and how we look after our own business.”
Watch the full interview with Gally on iFollow PNE now by clicking on the video above.