Frankie McAvoy says that the mood in the PNE camp is good heading into the weekend’s game against Reading.
Despite losing the opening match of the Championship season last Saturday, the head coach has stressed the importance of not getting too low in defeat, and equally so not getting ahead of themselves after victories.
The first win of the campaign came on Tuesday evening against League Two side Mansfield Town, who gave the Lilywhites a tough test.
“The mood’s been good in the camp,” Frankie told iFollow PNE. “The bit I’ll say is obviously when you lose a game, the difficult part is to try and make sure you don’t get too low when you lose.
“The good thing being in the Championship is the games come thick and fast, so you can quickly get it out your system, but I keep saying to them we cannot dwell on what’s happened in the past.
“Tuesday night’s now in the past as well, we did well we won the game 3-0 but it was a tough game, and I’m reading that it was a very comfortable victory in the papers so sometimes people just look at the scoreline and forget exactly how tough the games are.
“I keep saying that every game is tough, but our morale in the camp is good and we’ll go to Reading in a good frame of mind to hopefully try to do our best to pick up the win.”
North End’s last trip to Berkshire to face Reading came in November 2020, with PNE coming away with a 3-0 victory that evening, while the reverse fixture was a goalless draw in Lancashire.
Frankie’s experiences of travelling to the Madejski Stadium, now known as the Select Car Leasing Stadium, have always been tough and he’s anticipating the same this weekend.
He said: “That’s in the past and they came here after that and they played us at Deepdale, they did really well that game, and any time you go to Reading at the Madejski Stadium it’s always tough games.
“Even when we went there in my time at Norwich, I always found it was a hard game, and I expect nothing but the same on Saturday.”
North End welcomed back forwards Sean Maguire and Scott Sinclair back to action midweek for the first time this season, with the latter scoring a brace, and Emil Riis also netted his second goal of the campaign.
Their performances, along with many other positive showings, have given the head coach some tough decisions to make.
He added: “What I’ve got to try and do is pick the best team that’s capable of going to try and win the game for us at Reading.
“It’s great that we’ve got a good squad, plenty of players to pick from, and at the end of the day it’s our task to try and make sure that we pick the right team.
“When goalscorers score goals then that’s what you’re looking for and the competition for front players is really good at the minute. It’s just making sure that we can try and get the right combinations, and I’m looking forward to it to be honest.”
Hear Frankie’s full interview with iFollow PNE at the top of the page.