Preston North End's Struggles Under Paul Heckingbottom: Time to Win

Paul Heckingbottom knows the talking has to stop. The results have made that brutally clear.

Backed heavily in the summer, the Preston North End boss walked into this season with something managers at Deepdale have rarely enjoyed: serious money to reshape a squad. Across July and August, a dozen new faces arrived. A rebuild, not a tweak.

Yet four Championship games in, Preston sit bottom. Four played, four lost. Three goals scored. The table is already unforgiving.

“There’s no way we had a competitive team at the start of the season,” Heckingbottom told BBC Radio Lancashire, pointing to a side that has been in constant flux since opening day. “The squad has changed every single week from the first game.”

That upheaval, he argues, is over. Now the excuses are, too.

“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 pressure has been building since last spring. Preston were fourth in January last season and talking about the play-offs. Then the form fell off a cliff: just three wins from their final 15 games, and they limped home in 14th. The club responded with what Heckingbottom calls unprecedented backing from the board. Bigger budgets. More signings. A chance to reset.

He’s grateful for that, but he isn’t dressing it up as a quick fix.

“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’s the long-term vision: develop, sell smart, reinvest, climb. Promotion, growth, a Preston side that doesn’t just flirt with the top six but lives there. All of that, in his words, is “further down the line”.

Right now, the job is far simpler. Brutal, even.

“The short term is just winning games.”

The numbers underline why. Preston have found the net only three times in the league so far. The forward line has been ripped up and only partially rebuilt.

“Even now, we lost five centre-forwards in the summer, and we’ve replaced them with two,” Heckingbottom admitted. The solution can’t just be waiting for a number nine to catch fire.

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

So the demand goes out across the pitch. Wingers must carry more threat. Set pieces have to count. Defenders can’t just defend.

The timing of their next fixture adds another layer of edge. Blackburn Rovers, Lancashire rivals, await on Saturday. A derby, a bottom-of-the-table scrap, and a chance to change the mood in one punch.

The board have paid for a squad they believe can compete. Heckingbottom insists that squad is finally in place.

Now comes the only question that matters: can Preston start proving it on the pitch?