[themaclad]

Preston North End 2 Keane, Frokjaer Sunderland 1 Clarke pen

PNE line-up: Woodman; Storey, Lindsay, Hughes; Potts, McCann (Holmes, 76), Ledson, Best (Whatmough, 79); Browne, Frøkjær (Woodburn, 86); Keane. Subs not used: Cornell, Cunningham, Bauer, Rodriguez-Gentile, Taylor, Leigh.

Sunderland line-up: Patterson; Himes, Ballard, O’Nien, Cirkin; Neil, Ekwah (Ba, 75); Roberts, Bellingham (Pritchard, 66), Clarke; Dack (Hemir, 66). Subs not used: Bishop, Huggins, Batth, Bennette, Triantis, Rigg.

Attendance: 19,892 (5,655 Sunderland fans).

Referee: Mr J Linington.

A hard fought victory possibly got slightly lucky both goals had a touch of fortune about them but c'est a vie. Unchanged side for us not surprising really as we have a paper thin squad, the visitors had the majority of the side that won convincingly on the last day of the season.
A murky afternoon but not that bad to warrant the floodlights being on at 3 pm for a Saturday game in August.
Great away support for Sunderland and a crowd of just shy of 20000.
Sunderland were always going to be a danger going forward with wingers Clarke and Roberts are match winners on their day and with North End having a very inexperiennced 17 year old at left wing back, they were always going to exploit this, and so it proved
Roberts was a handful and gave Best a very arly lesson about the standard he is up against at this level.
First 20 minutes were singularly uneventful they looked more dangerous than us and per under Lowe the build up was painfully slow but against the run of pay we took the lead, looked a tam shot from Mads or was it a well constructed pass to Keane, either the way the shot/pass from Mads hit Keane and went in.
Within five minutes Sunderland were level from the spot after Clarke was apparently fouled by Best, one of a series of strange decisions by Mr Linnington. Clarke although Woodman got a hand to it. Happy to get to the break as we were distincly under the cosh getting to half time

Second half thought we started the brighter before Sunderland got their wingers back into the game, goal again probably just slightly against the run of play, an attck broke down near our early Visitors slow to react Browne down fied tried to put Frokjaer in the ball hit Keane and ran to thge aforementioned Dane right footed past Patterson knee slide towards Town End the lad is learning.
Instant reaction from the Black Cats, Roberts probably still not sure how Woodman saved his effort from 6 yards, from the resulting corner O'Nein should have scored with a free header and substitute Ba exploiting acres of space behind Best was denied by a magnificent Hughes recovery
We defended pretty well getting bodies in the way of shots on target and managed to hold on for a welcome three points.
We need reinforcements as for the Black Cats getting Stewrt back and firing cannot come to soon enough

Preston boss Ryan Lowe told BBC Radio Lancashire:

"You've got to be horrible sometimes. We have to make this place horrible. We've got to be uglier than we've ever been.

"We're not getting carried away. We'll keep coming up with game plans. If there's times we can play football we will do it. You find a way to win.

"Mads [Frokjaer] is a flair player, a maverick, it's what we wanted. He's getting better each time. He's got a bit of magic on the ball."

Sunderland boss Tony Mowbray told BBC Radio Newcastle:

"It was very similar to last week really - a similar amount of the ball, a similar amount of set plays, a similar amount of chances and we didn't capitalise on them. Fine margins.

"Was it that different from the game here at the end of last season when we stuck the ball in the back of the net three times? We'll be fine. I feel like the team are functioning ok apart from the last little bit. If we were getting dominated... they had two shots on target and scored with both. We just have to keep doing what we're doing.

"You should judge football on the performance level of the team but we don't, we get judged by results. The results are not very good but the performance level in both games has been pretty good."