Sean Maguire says that Preston North End won’t be disheartened by Saturday’s 1-0 defeat at home to Stoke City.
PNE looked to be in control in the opening stages of the game as Alex Neil set his side up in a 3-5-2 formation, but he was forced to adjust his tactics on 22 minutes when Tom Barkhuizen was shown a red card.
Seani told iFollow PNE: “When you go down to ten men, it’s hard to regroup before going into half-time and we had a game plan to go out and stop them and make it hard for them and I felt in the first 20 minutes it was going to plan.
“We didn’t plan to go down to ten men after 22 minutes. I felt in the second half we did push, we did have a few chances, the game actually started to open up.
“There was a lot of space for them, they’ve one man extra, but we kept on pushing and pushing and unfortunately, we couldn’t get that goal.
“There’s a few positives today, we won’t be too downhearted. The good thing about the Championship is there’s always another game to look forward to. We have a difficult game next week before going into the international break but we’ve just got to look forward to that now.”
Barkhuizen’s red seemed to be the turning point in the game and Seani wasn’t entirely convinced that PNE’s No.29 deserved his punishment.
Seani said: “I felt the first 20 minutes we were in control of the game, growing in confidence and if anybody was going to score it was going to be us and looked comfortable in the game.
“It’s a soft red card for Barky. I haven’t actually seen it back for myself but from where I was standing I thought Barks slipped and it was just one of those ones where you’ve got to take it on the chin and play the rest of the game with ten men.
“It’s frustrating, you can’t fault anyone for endeavour, for effort. They scored a goal shortly after Barks got sent off and it was a kick in the teeth, but I thought the boys showed a lot of resilience and we continued to push, but unfortunately we just couldn’t get that goal and the rub of the green hasn’t been going for us in the last couple of the games.
“In the last couple of games we’ve put 110 per cent and you can’t fault anyone for that.”
Maguire played in the striker role this afternoon alongside Jayden Stockley against Stoke City, the first time that those two have been paired together up top from the start this season.
Seani commented: “I quite enjoyed it. The first 20 minutes, I felt the game we set out to play worked; getting the ball up to Jayden and me feeding off the scraps and me getting in behind.
“I felt myself that and Jayds started to grow in confidence. It’s just one of those things with the sending off. I did enjoy playing up top with Jayden today, I felt we did show glimpses when we did work together that we can work as a pair and hopefully that can continue.
“I know how Jayd works and he knows how I work and in some ways we’re like chalk and cheese in the way we play and hopefully we can learn off each other and just keep pushing.”
You can watch Seani’s full interview on iFollow by clicking on the video at the top of the page.