PNE faced a young Manchester City side in a behind-closed-doors friendly on Tuesday
The scoreline suggested that PNE would have an easy afternoon, but the City side’s style is identical to the senior team’s, and they produced some superb football on the day. Preston’s manager recognized it as a valuable 90 minutes and said he would gladly arrange such games in the future.
“Yeah, ideally, I didn’t want that to be out there,” he replied. “However, I and Brian Barry-Murphy have a good relationship.” He’s got some terrific, brilliant young players and has been itching to get across with a team—to show his young men what it’s like in the real world. They have some fantastic players. We used it as a training exercise with two mixed teams.
“They had some good chances, we had some good chances, and it was a good game of football. Mostly, it was for the injured lads coming back: Hughesy, Jack, Ched getting more minutes and whatnot, and lads who haven’t really played. It worked well. It was a fantastic little workout, and credit goes to City; they came here and had a real good go of it with the way they play.
“We’ll definitely have more of them, because I think it’s important to have those relationships with clubs like Manchester City—whom we can call on when we need a game and know the game will be extremely competitive.” So, yeah, that was an amazing run-out. Calvin Ramsay also played 45 minutes, so the game was primarily for those three. We had a few minutes with the rest of the guys. They got a day off on Wednesday, so we’ll double up on Thursday and Friday.”
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