Preston North End's Paul Heckingbottom Faces Urgent Need for Wins
Paul Heckingbottom knows the talking has to stop. The results have to change.
Backed heavily in the summer, the Preston North End boss walked into this season with a dozen new signings and a very different dressing room. What he has not had yet is a single league point. Four Championship games, four defeats, bottom of the table.
Heckingbottom does not pretend otherwise.
"There's no way we had a competitive team at the start of the season," he told BBC Radio Lancashire, laying bare just how chaotic the opening weeks felt. "The squad has changed every single week from the first game."
The churn has finally slowed. The excuses, he knows, must as well.
Backed like never before – now comes the bill
Preston’s board have given him what previous managers could only ask for. Strong financial backing. A major rebuild. Twelve new faces across July and August and, in Heckingbottom’s eyes, a group now capable of standing toe-to-toe in the Championship.
"We've got the tools now. We've put the squad together," he said. "Now we have to get to work and get the wins. That's the only way noise stops. You've got to start winning."
Last season still stings. Preston were fourth in January, flirting with the play-offs, only to collapse with three wins in their final 15 games and slide to 14th. The club responded by opening the chequebook. Heckingbottom calls the backing “unprecedented” and insists he is grateful, but he also warns the project is not a quick fix.
For him, the real shift has to run deeper than one transfer window.
"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 game: progression, higher finishes, promotion, growth. The here and now is far more basic.
"The short term is just winning games."
Goals dried up, forwards stripped away
Preston’s early-season problems are brutally simple. They do not score enough.
Three goals in four Championship matches tells its own story, and Heckingbottom is under no illusions about the creative shortfall.
"Even now, we lost five centre-forwards in the summer, and we've replaced them with two," he said. The numbers up top have been cut almost in half. The burden has to spread.
"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.
Set-pieces, late runs, different patterns. Everything is on the table. Even the centre-backs are being dragged into the conversation.
"We'll need goals from centre-backs as well this season, which we haven't previously had enough of."
Derby test with little margin for error
Next up is Blackburn Rovers on Saturday, a Lancashire derby that rarely needs extra spice. This one has it anyway. Preston sit bottom, still searching for their first league point, still trying to knit together a squad rebuilt on the fly.
Heckingbottom believes the tools are finally in place. The question now is stark and simple: can this revamped Preston side turn investment and intent into wins before the early-season pressure hardens into something far more dangerous?
