{"id":674936,"date":"2026-01-05T07:26:21","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T07:26:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/674936\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T07:26:21","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T07:26:21","slug":"paul-heckingbottom-hails-dynamic-preston-away-display-after-win-at-bristol-city-the-irish-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/674936\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Heckingbottom hails dynamic Preston away display after win at Bristol City \u2013 The Irish News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul Heckingbottom praised a \u201creally strong away performance\u201d after seeing his Preston team cement their place in the Sky Bet Championship play-off zone with three well-earned points at Bristol City.<\/p>\n

Lewis Dobbin fired the visitors in front from Jordan Thompson\u2019s through ball after eight minutes at Ashton Gate and Alfie Devine sealed a deserved success with a low 70th-minute drive from a narrow angle.<\/p>\n

North End defended their lead with impressive organisation and fierce commitment against opponents who had enhanced their own play-off prospects with a thumping 5-0 New Year\u2019s Day home win over Portsmouth.<\/p>\n

Manager Heckingbottom said: \u201cI thought we threatened all game and the only disappointment is that we didn\u2019t create more clear chances from the positions we got into.<\/p>\n

\"Powerhouse<\/a>\"Monday’s<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI consider Bristol City one of the most dangerous teams in the Championship and the fact that our goalkeeper has made so few saves is a testament to how well we defended.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a really strong away performance and I can\u2019t praise the lads highly enough at the end of a busy four-game period.<\/p>\n

\u201cThree of those matches were away which meant a lot of time on the coach travelling. It was a rough schedule for our fans as well as the players.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have been fantastic and it\u2019s nice now to look forward to three home games. Our performance levels have been where I want them to be and, while we can\u2019t be great every week, when we play well, we are a match for anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

City came back down to earth with a bang after the euphoria of their biggest victory of the season and head coach Gerhard Struber was very unhappy with the goals conceded.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am super disappointed because of how cheaply we have gifted Preston their goals,\u201d he said. \u201cSometimes you can accept defeat, but not when it happens in this manner.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were in front without knowing how they did it. Against a team as well organised as Preston, you cannot afford to let them score so easily.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnother difference to the Portsmouth game was that we were not clinical. Between the two boxes we played well, but we were not strong or sharp enough in their penalty area.\u201d<\/p>\n

Struber was happy with the debut of new signing Sam Morsy as a second-half substitute and is optimistic of recruiting a striker before next Saturday\u2019s FA Cup clash with Watford at Ashton Gate.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cSam showed he can bring control to our game in midfield. I am hopeful of completing another deal soon and the priority in to bring in someone who can help us score more goals.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paul Heckingbottom praised a \u201creally strong away performance\u201d after seeing his Preston team cement their place in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":674937,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8818],"tags":[381,18228,205194,748,9030,393,4884,12037,10031,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-674936","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bristol","8":"tag-bristol","9":"tag-bristol-city","10":"tag-bristol-city-vs-preston-north-end","11":"tag-britain","12":"tag-championship","13":"tag-england","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-preston-north-end","16":"tag-soccer","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115841308028967532","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=674936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/674937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=674936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=674936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}