Paul Heckingbottom's Challenge: Preston North End Must Start Winning

Paul Heckingbottom knows the talking has to stop. The money has been spent, the squad rebuilt, the excuses stripped away. Now Preston North End have to win.

Backed heavily in the summer, the Preston boss brought in a dozen new faces across July and August, reshaping a squad he insists simply was not ready when the season kicked off. The price of that slow start is brutal: four games, four defeats, bottom of the Championship.

“There’s no way we had a competitive team at the start of the season,” he told BBC Radio Lancashire, laying bare just how turbulent those early weeks were. “The squad has changed every single week from the first game.”

That churn has finally eased. The recruitment drive is done. The dressing room is set.

“We’ve got the tools now. We’ve put the squad together. Now we have to get to work and get the wins. That’s the only way noise stops. You’ve got to start winning.”

The noise around Deepdale has been growing. Last season Preston were fourth in January, flirting with the play-offs, only to unravel with three wins in their final 15 games and slide to 14th. This campaign has begun with an even heavier thud, but the club hierarchy responded with what Heckingbottom describes as unprecedented backing.

He is careful to underline that gratitude. The board, he says, have taken a significant step to give Preston a chance of competing properly in a division where financial muscle often dictates the pace.

“We’ve made that first step to improve resources and be able to start to compete, and get to the level where we can really push,” he said.

But money alone will not bridge the gap. Heckingbottom is clear about the club’s next evolution: Preston must start producing their own.

“The biggest thing that we had to do as a club if we want to move forward and start competing is make sure we can develop our own players,” he said. “Ultimately the benefit is you have success together, or you sell players and move on and invest.”

That is the long-term picture. A pathway, a model, a future.

The present is far more blunt. Four games, no points, only three goals scored. A Lancashire derby at Blackburn Rovers looming on Saturday with the table already making uncomfortable reading.

“Progression, finishing as high as we can, and winning promotion and growing the club is further down the line,” Heckingbottom admitted. “The short term is just winning games.”

To do that, Preston must find goals from somewhere. Anywhere. The summer exodus stripped Heckingbottom of almost an entire strike force.

“Even now, we lost five centre-forwards in the summer, and we’ve replaced them with two,” he said. The arithmetic is stark. So is the challenge.

The response has been tactical as much as emotional. Preston are trying to spread the burden, leaning on wide players, demanding more from deeper positions, asking defenders to be a threat rather than passengers at set pieces.

“We’re going to have to get goals and assists and create chances in other ways. We’ve tried that with the wider players,” he explained. “We’ll need goals from centre-backs as well this season, which we haven’t previously had enough of.”

That is the reality of a squad still finding its shape. Creativity has to be manufactured, shared out, drilled in. The margin for error has already shrunk.

The investment is in place. The tools, as Heckingbottom puts it, are in the building. A derby at Ewood Park now offers something more than local bragging rights. It offers a line in the sand.