As a Saints fan, you should certainly be able to empathise with Preston fans. At the moment, they are having the season that we had in the Premier League two years ago, where you rock up to every game with an almost 100% expectation of it being another shitshow, another calamity, and another game with zero points added to the tally for the season.

Preston, over the last few years, have been one of those teams that have treaded water in the middle of the division. It didn’t seem to matter what players or manager they had; they always finished somewhere between 13th and 15th, and that was largely the expectation for this season.

The fans, of course, would have been hoping that it was time for a play-off challenge, especially with the play-offs now coming down to eighth place, but it’s gone the other way, as poor recruitment has hammered them this season. Headline signing Alfie Devine has not worked out and, from last year’s team, Lewis Dobbin is, of course, on the opposition team today.

They started this season with Paul Heckingbottom in charge, one of that group of northern-based managers who never seem to do particularly well at any club they are at, but he has gone and been replaced by club legend Graham Alexander. By employing a club legend as manager, they were probably expecting some sort of new-manager bounce, but in six games, Alexander’s record stands at one draw and five defeats, so you can definitely say that the new-manager bounce is not happening.

If the team does not improve quite quickly, the Preston faithful will soon find themselves concentrating on just having a few good days between now and the inevitable relegation at the end of the season. Of course, things can change in the Championship very quickly—I mean, Portsmouth have won four games out of six and they’re shit—but five points after 14 games is not a great start. Saints cannot let any Preston recovery start today. Our two defeats in the league this season have been away from home against poor sides in Watford and Wrexham.

Oh yeah, we are top of the league, sort of. The aforementioned poor side, Wrexham, had a significant result without any ineligible players during the week, with a home win over Middlesbrough. There’s no point in talking about the four points we had deducted in some regards, but that result was significant because it meant that, in terms of points won over the 14 games so far, Saints would actually be top of the league. This is the first step to achieving this season’s goals. The next is to be top, including the four-point deduction. A win today would certainly help, and we have to dig deep, be professional, put the hard yards in and get the job done. Regardless, we can now say that we are the best team in the league, and it’d be hard to argue with.

Of our injured players, it is widely expected that Leo Scienza will be back, and in fact, he’s been pictured in training videos this week. However, there will be no Cyle Larin or Caspar Jander. Our Canadian centre-forward and talisman has been left out of Canada’s squad for the forthcoming international break, which is good news, as it gives him a better chance of being fit when it all resumes again in a couple of weeks.

Team news is as expected apart from maybe Welington in for Manning. Dobbin is up front and Matsuki is picked again for his third game in a week, with both Fellows and Edozie on the bench. Away we go, and there’s a yellow card after about a minute as Scienza goes down the left and Stan Mills cynically treads on his achilles and picks up a yellow card. I remember MIlls being a bellend for Oxford last season. Worryingly, straight away Preston get on the front foot, and we just give the ball away. We allow ourselves to get pinned back by the team with 5 points and it’s alarming – another fast start by us for fuck sake. Thierry Small, formerly of our acdemy, wins a corner out on the left. In it comes, punched away by Peretz.

Peretz takes a goal kick short to Schlotterbeck, whose standing foot gives way and he collapses in a heap. Preston nick the ball and cross it to the back post, and there are a few seconds of pinball before ex-Skate Lang decides to take a dive to try to win a penalty, and the referee eventually stops the game. Preston fans are giving it the big one, and their players are all around the referee, but the bottom line is that that’s a big fucking dive by Lang and he’s being told that. Meanwhile, Schlotterbeck has not got up. On come the trainers, and off goes the BFG with what looks very much like a dislocated shoulder. He’s replaced by Zach Abbott, who drops into central defence, with Stephens moving to the left.

So, issues at the back and Saints have not got anything going at the other end of the pitch, as every time we get anywhere near half-way, we just give the ball away. Scienza gets robbed, and a ball gets played over the top. Lang runs through and the flag goes up, but he carries on anyway and hits the bar. We got away with one there because that was never offside.

With calm composure needed, it’s a short goal kick from Peretz, and Stephens mis-controls it. Devine goes through and smashes in the shot, but Peretz sticks out a foot to block it. Eventually, another shot comes in and flicks off the bar and over. What the fuck are we doing? Bree is not at right back and we look so flaky and makeshift.

Saints do actually try to get something going in midfield, with Bree picking out Dobbin, who spins around Lindsay, who takes the yellow for the team by blatantly hauling him down. It’s not a red card because there is a defender behind but it certainly stopped a situation where in all likelihood, we would have been having a shot on goal.

It’s a brief respite, though. It’s all Preston, and some more nondescript defending sees a cross kicked out to the edge of the box and there is Thompson, steaming in on the volley, who hits an absolutely superb strike just inside Peretz post. 1-0 to the team in 24th.

Saints actually wake up and try to play some football in the Preston half. Azaz dummies past one challenge on the edge of the box before taking aim at the far post and seeing his effort drop a couple of feet wide. Welington then gets taken out on the left by Hughes, but not before getting his pass away – play on – and then Lindsay’s dreadful touch falls for Dobbin who is clean through before Lindsay hauls him back for what must be a second yellow card. The referee, however, completely bottles it and goes back to the first foul, having not blown for it originally.

Saints do appear to have woken up now, and Azaz and Matsuki combine to send Scienza away on the right-hand side. He chops past the last defender into the penalty area and, with his left foot, produces an absolutely shit effort straight at the goalkeeper.

Half-time, and that was fucking rubbish and so annoying. Another 45 minutes where we just haven’t turned up, and we’ve given Preston something to hang on to. They totally deserve to be in front, and we have just not done enough. No changes at half-time, and the second half starts with more of the same, with the ball being hoisted into the box, Lindsay heads it down, and Thierry Small lashes over the bar.

On 50 minutes, Saints begin to take over the game, with Azaz finding Scienza on the left. Once more, he goes for the shot with his left foot, but once again it’s straight at the goalkeeper, who palms it up in the air and then catches it. There are more encouraging signs a couple of minutes later as we pass the ball around nicely before Azaz slots Scienza through on the left. Once again, his shot is lacking any sort of conviction and goes straight at the keeper. Whatever happened to passing the ball into the big fucking gap either side of the keeper?

Saints are now playing some attacking football with a bit more pace. We win a corner out on the right, which is crossed by Scienza and headed out. Welington lines up another thunderbastard and connects with it superbly. It flies from about 35 yards through the crowd, a slight nick off of someone and the keeper gets airborne to tip it over the bar. Good save.

We are beginning to look marginally dangerous now, with Azaz linking up with Dobbin and playing a nice one-two, finding himself right in front of goal. His effort is away from the keeper, but it hits a defender and deflects straight at the keeper before he can move, hitting him in the chest and bouncing away. It has to be said that that’s just unlucky.

We are running out of time, so we empty the bench, with Dobbin, Brie and Welington all coming off for Manning, Edozie and Mubama. JWP puts a low cross into the box, and Mubama goes for it but somehow doesn’t get a touch as it goes through to the keeper. No one is surprised that he didn’t get a touch.

Saints are, of course, throwing people forward now, and the inevitable almost happens as Azaz gives the ball away. Moran breaks upfield for Preston before finding substitute Burgzorg, whose effort is blocked for a corner by Abbott.

We’re in the 95th minute now, with Azaz chucking a cross into the box. It is controlled at the back post by Scienza, and it does flick off the outstretched arm of a Preston player, but that’s never a handball that anyone is going to give. True to expectations, the referee is not interested, Preston get a boot to it, and that’s the end of the game. Wank.

You would’ve thought the message from the West Brom game would’ve been that you can’t afford not to play for the first 45 minutes and get away with it. It clearly wasn’t the message from the West Brom game, as we did exactly the same thing again today in the first half and allowed Preston to totally dominate the game whilst we played walking football, badly.

There were a number of things that came home to roost today because today was the day when we didn’t get away with some of the things that we have been getting away with.

Not playing for the first 45 minutes killed us today—allowing a team with no confidence to get a foothold and get themselves something to hang on to. A feature of Preston’s season has been a lack of response to adversity—let a goal in and then fall apart—so a fast start should have been non-negotiable to try and get ahead and then manage the game. Why bother with that, though? Let’s let them dominate and do what they want.

Tonda’s over-complicated full-back wankery came home to roost as well. This inverted full-back bollocks is doing my head in. What are the pros and cons? Why do we persevere when it’s not working and we’re not getting anything out of it? The game situation was that our main central defender, Keven Schlotterbeck, had gone off injured and our defence was now Welington, who is a reserve, Jack Stephens playing on the wrong side where he’s not comfortable, and Zach Abbott, who was playing his second game ever. What we needed at that point was a solid back four with James Bree at right-back, but instead of that, we were getting completely dominated and still trying to play out with Bree in this inverted right-midfield role. That would be fine if we didn’t continually keep giving the ball away and then letting Preston break into the big space that he had vacated. Sometimes, the KISS principle is needed: Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Back in the day, the players would have taken responsibility and the captain would be saying, “Okay, for the next 10 minutes, we’re just going to play a solid back four and play our way back into the game.” Nowadays, it’s head coach micro-management. Why do you need to wait until half-time to do something so glaringly obvious?

Having gone into half-time behind, we had to up our effort by 200% and deal with the fact that the team that started the game at the bottom of the league with only five points now had something to hold on to. Preston managed the second half by basically going 5-4-1 and challenging us to break them down. In all honesty, we created very, very little.

What also came home to roost today was the striker recruitment. I’ve been trying to get on board the Lewis Dobbin train, but he is incredibly hit-and-miss. Basically, the problems are that, in addition to being lightweight, he can’t control a football. I used to think it was just because he was lightweight and got knocked off the ball, but a lot of the time there is not a defender anywhere near him and he still can’t control it. He definitely needs to improve his all-round game before he can be considered a reliable option for a team at the top of the table trying to get promoted. We paid £9 million for him so we must persevere and we’re having to play him up front, which is not really his position, because our non-Cyle up front option, is not the one.

It speaks volumes, however, that Dobbon is rightly preferred to Divin Mubama, who, quite frankly, is shit. The number of times the ball goes across the box and is a yard in front of Mubama is amazing, and this happens because he’s on his heels all the time. He is not aggressive, he doesn’t win duels, he doesn’t hold the ball up, he’s not a fox in the box—he’s not anything that’s going tobe reliable at this level.

The Cyle-shaped hole in our attack is massive. There’s a knock-on effect as well because, with Dobbin playing up front, Azaz has to be moved further forward, so the press in midfield is not as good as it needs to be. Today, we had two players in there, while Preston had three a lot of the time, and in the first half in particular, Flynn Downes and JWP couldn’t get near them.

The slight caveat our forwards have is that they are not helped by the quality of service coming into the box. I lost count today of the number of shin-high crosses that we put in, which are just smashed away at the near post. Fucking rubbish, to be honest. What’s anyone supposed to do with that? Both full-backs were guilty, and the wingers were, too.

There is clearly something wrong with Leo Scienza at the moment. Having missed the game against West Brom with unspecified “pain”, he was back today, but he’s clearly not confident in his body at some level because he looks frightened to take players on and isn’t using his pace. His shooting, whilst never being his best asset, is so completely devoid of any conviction and confidence. He just slaps it straight at the goalkeeper every time. Most of the time, he’s coming in from an angle and you have to go across the goalkeeper to the far post.

There’s also a bit of a problem with Finn Azaz, who is in one of his “off-the-boil” trots of games where nothing really works and he just looks too slow. Having said that, we create conditions for him that are not ideal by being so bad in the first half, going behind and allowing Preston to just get nine or ten players behind the ball at all times and crowd him out.

The injury to Keven Schlotterbeck’s shoulder is a bit of a worry as well because, with him going off injured, not only did we lose the natural left-sided balance of the defence, we also lost all the progressive passing into midfield and up to the forwards that’s been so good for us since he came into the team. Zach Abbott did okay coming in on the right-hand side, but it did mean that Jack Stephens had to move to the left, into a position where he admits he’s not as comfortable. Hopefully, Big Kev can recover over the next two weeks and it’s just a strain rather than something horrible with his collarbone or a dislocated shoulder. (Update – it’s dislocated – shit)

A lot of people were moaning about the referee today, who wasn’t great, but he’s not the reason we lost. There were a couple of decisions that could’ve gone our way that might have made a difference, notably at the end of the first half when Lindsay committed a second bookable foul. However, he went back to an earlier foul having played on. He bottled it plain and simple as the ball was still in play and we had the advantage. I have no complaints about the handball shout at the end.

So – we lost to a team who only had five fucking points – that can happen but the way it happened was unacceptable. It is an absolutely terrible result to file alongside the Wrexham and Watford defeats. We started the weekend as the best team in the Championship over 14 games, and we’ve just lost to the team who were comfortably the worst. It’s a funny old game.

However, it’s not funny because we simply should not be losing to Preston. With due respect, it’s one of the most established truths in football that hard work beats talent if talent doesn’t work hard. I’m not saying that Preston had no talent, as that was a hell of a strike for the winning goal, but that was a win built on hard work, and they worked harder than us over the course of the 90 minutes and deserved their win.

A positive is that at least there are two weeks for the anger to dissipate. That was shit. We’ll all be back for Derby at home at lunchtime on Saturday week.

Up the fucking Saints