Manager Ryan Lowe thought his PNE team got it “spot on” to take three points against an in-form Swansea City side.
The South Wales outfit arrived at Deepdale having won seven of their past ten Championship fixtures, but it was North End who came out on top thanks to Brad Potts’ goal on the half-hour mark.
While the Swans kept almost three-quarters of the possession – a typical feature of their game – PNE held firm to secure an 11th clean sheet of the season and another three points.
Ryan told iFollow PNE: “It was a hard-fought three points. I thought the character, resilience and the desire of the group was spot on tonight.
“We go a goal to the good and they’re throwing everything at you, which we knew they were going to do.
“They’re a good team, let’s make no mistake about it. They move the ball quite well and I thought tactically we got it spot on tonight because the lads knew when to jump, when not to jump.
“As we said before, it’s easy to just dive into a tackle and they can just pop it round you because they’ve got some good footballers, so overall happy with the character and desire of the lads to keep going and to find the result that we wanted.”
The manager went back to a 3-5-2 formation and made two changes to personnel, with Andrew Hughes and Ched Evans coming into the side.
Evans – a Welshman – was at the forefront of PNE’s play on the night, starting up top alongside Emil Riis and often being the linkman for attacks.
Ryan added: “We made a couple of changes, and I thought Ched Evans was fantastic tonight.
“The gameplan was to get the ball up the pitch and beat their press, which worked well.
“I thought the lads tactically got it spot on. We gave them a gameplan, they took it to fruition, so yeah possession and everything else will look good for them but sometimes it’s what you do with the possession.
“They had a few chances towards the latter stages of the game but I thought we were well worthy of the three points because of the hunger and the desire that the lads showed to not concede any goals.”
Tuesday night’s victory secured back-to-back wins in the space of four days, and next up for PNE is a trip to Berkshire to take on Reading on Friday night.
Ryan said: “It is [good to get back-to-back wins] but we have to go again don’t we on Friday. It’s relentless, isn’t it?
“We’ve set targets, we’re not far off where we want to be. We’ve got two more games to go now.
“It’s great we’ve got the three points to send the fans home happy again, and fair play to them singing us through towards the end because we needed it.
“We were backs against the wall a little bit, we’re going to be against good teams, but they were solid and resolute to keep the ball out the back of the net.
“We have to go and put a gameplan together now tomorrow. The lads are in doing their stuff tomorrow and Thursday, and we’ll travel to Reading on Friday and go again.”