[themaclad]

A Tuesday night meeting with Fran Lampard FC aka Coventry City, is one to get pulses racing they have been flying this season, although they did get slightly humped on Saturday at Portman Road, scoring goals for fun, pretty miserly at the back apart from Saturday when the high backline was exposed by the Tractors.

https://www.ccfc.co.uk/

MANAGER

Frank James Lampard (born 20 June 1978) is an English football manager and former midfielder who currently manages EFL Championship club Coventry City. Widely regarded as one of the greatest midfielders of all time and one of Chelsea's and the Premier League’s greatest ever players, Lampard holds the record of the most Premier League goals (177) by a midfielder in its history.



Attributed to Vysotsky



FORM GUIDE


PNE 10 COVENTRY 16

Signings Kesler - Hayden £4 milliion

Top Scorer

Thomas-Asante 10

---

Team News

Paul Heckingbottom expects Mads Frøkjær to be back available on Tuesday, having missed the Wrexham clash after feeling a ‘niggle’ in his hamstring in training last week.

Andrija Vukčević made his return to the bench at the weekend and he’ll be involved again against Coventry, as will Harrison Armstrong who recovered from injury to score as a substitute on Saturday.

PNE are still without Ali McCann, Brad Potts, Lewis Gibson, Jamal Lewis, Robbie Brady and Theo Carroll.

The Visitors
[
Coventry City arrive at Deepdale in a fantastic position after 19 matches, sitting top of the table with 43 points, with a nine-point buffer between themselves and the Play-Offs.

Frank Lampard’s side have been free-scoring all season long, having netted 50 goals already – unsurprisingly the division's top scorers by some distance.

The Sky Blues did, however, suffer a rare setback at the weekend as they were beaten 3-0 by Ipswich Town and they’ll be looking for a reaction on Tuesday at a stadium where they have never won a league fixture.

Match Officials

Referee: Ben Toner
Assistant Referees: Conor Brown and Emily Carney
Fourth Official: Ruebyn Ricardo

Ben Toner will take charge of a PNE fixture for only the second time in his career on Tuesday.

The previous occasion was North End’s first home match of 2025, a 1-1 draw against Oxford United.

So far this season, Toner has shown 44 yellow cards and two reds in 11 matches.

[themaclad]

https://www.fotmob.com/matches/preston-v...tab=lineup
Attendance: 18,477 (4,902 Coventry City fans).

Referee: Ben Toner.

This was Coventry's record at the home of football, every league game


All that is missing is the letter W for win, last night they had a massive chance to put W on that list, up against 10 men for 51 minutes and they blew it.

Tremendous 5000 away support on a Tuesday night in early December, went away disappointed mainly due to a tremendous backs to the wall performance by the home side, reduced to ten when the hapless Lindsay was caught on the wrong side of Hadji Wright, brought him down on the edge of the box, the red was correct but to be fair to the defender Iversen started to come for the ball, hesitated as did Lindsay and the rest they say is history.
Before the red Wright had missed three great chances, took us a while to get into them but a fine move down the right was let down by the final ball behind Dobbin.
After the card it was up to them to break us down, when they did get a clear chance Iversen added another to the collection of great saves, denying Wright.
For a brief perod we had the ascendency Rushworth tipping over from Armstrong, then came the goal, Rudoni in space fires a mishit shot going wide until it hit Hughes wrongs footed Iversen as the ball dribbled into the net.
#Substitutions went two up front and almost immediately back in the game, Pol down the right, chipped ball into box and Jebbison who was outstanding last night angled the ball past Rushworth.
They were rocking but couldn't quite get a second but it was back to the wall for the last few minutes but we survived, great point.
Finally Mr Toner was excellent, which makes a change from some of the officials we have had this season.

HECK

Paul Heckingbottom described his side as magnificent as they battled with ten men to earn a point at home against league leaders Coventry City.

When Liam Lindsay saw red in the first half, the task against the division’s leading goalscorers looked increasingly difficult, and even more so when Victor Torp then broke the deadlock with a deflected effort.

But North End didn’t lie down and they continued to show fight to draw level through Daniel Jebbison and in turn earn an impressive point.

Hecky said: “It shows what I've been saying about the group all the time. We're really determined, really dogged, we get a lot of things right and we need to get a lot of things right to compete.

“That's how we do it. That's how we want to be. Coventry changed their shape to play against us tonight, that's a big compliment. I think probably they felt we were going to be as physical and direct as we were against Wrexham and they wanted to stand up to us that way but we didn't.

“We had to change our team for the freshness and personnel. It was only really when Smudge (Michael Smith) came on so Jebbo had someone in and around him so when we went in the box they could never clear it. Our midfield dropped on the seconds and we kept it alive and I thought we were a real threat for 15 minutes.

“People talk about all sorts in football, but the only unconditional thing that all winning teams have is that mentality. That's it. Any team who wins any leagues, silverware, competitions in England or Europe, that's what they have.”

The Sky Blues were knocking on the door at 0-0, especially after PNE went down to ten, but Heckingbottom’s men were throwing themselves in front of everything and doing all they can to defend their clean sheet.


Then, once the deflected goal went in, many might have expected Coventry to go on and cruise home, however North End reacted with a triple sub which reenergised the troops who went on to earn a point.

Hecky said: “We were fantastic. I think before the sending off, both teams were sort of playing the conditions. It was tough to get a foothold.

“We had quite a bit of the ball, they got back behind the ball really well. Their big threat I felt was when they were trying to get Haji Wright in behind us, which actually led to the sending off.

“It was a bit of a stalemate. Like I said I think the conditions played their part and the sending off changed the game, both in the dynamic of it and the tempo of it and everything.

“We were really strong, defending in a 5-3-1. It means you give up a lot of ground. For all their possession and balls in the box we defended it really, really well, and kept the shots from distance and so we were really disappointed with the nature of the goal that they scored. That deflection, a really soft one, but there’s nothing we can do about it and that's probably the only way Dan (Daniel Iversen) was going to get beaten tonight.

“We responded straight away in terms of a 4-3-2 so the principles of how we play don't change there. It's just we’re taking one body out of protecting our box and putting him higher up the pitch to try and cause them problems.

“We went a bit more direct because it was Smudge and we dropped on the seconds and I felt for the next ten or 15 minutes, we were the team who were the most likely to score.

“It was only the last five to ten minutes where they had that possession again in and around our box, so we went back and brought Andy (Vukčević) on for the last five minutes giving us that extra body so we could spread the pitch.”

Coventry manager Frank Lampard told BBC Radio CWR:

"We're obviously frustrated not to win the game -11 against 11 we should be ahead, 11 against 10 we were playing in their half, kept on creating, had a goal disallowed, brought an incredible save from their goalkeeper, opportunity after opportunity on a difficult pitch.

"The lads did pretty much everything they could other than get those extra goals that would have given us the comfort.

"The disappointment was the [Preston] goal because we knew only a lapse from us, or a counter-attack or set-piece, was their way of scoring and we allowed that, and that I can critique.

"You have to credit Preston a bit for the way they kept trying to stay in the game, defended very doggedly and then got their goal."