The season is barely out of the blocks, yet Preston North End are already staring at a week that could shape everything that follows.
This was supposed to be a reset. A fresh crack at the Championship after a summer of grumbling and doubt. Instead, five games in, the mood around Deepdale feels heavier than it did in May.
No league win in 90 minutes. Bottom of the table. Below a side that started on minus points. That is the cold reality facing Paul Heckingbottom.
The only flicker of light so far? A late equaliser and penalty shootout escape against Huddersfield Town in the cup, on neutral turf at Goodison Park. A brief, defiant night that has done little to mask the toil of recent weeks, on and off the pitch.
Transfer window closes under a cloud
On Tuesday night, as Bristol City left Deepdale with a 3-1 win, much of the focus wasn’t on the pitch at all. It was trained on one executive box high in the stand.
Inside sat PNE CEO Peter Ridsdale and fellow club officials, working the phones as the transfer window ticked towards its deadline. Deals were being driven over the line while Heckingbottom’s side, by most accounts the better team, still contrived to lose.
When the announcements finally flashed up on the big screen mid-match, the reaction told its own story.
Johnny Kenny arrived in a reported £3m move. Liam Gibbs followed on a season-long loan. Two fresh faces, two new options, two players yet to cross the white line in Preston colours.
Yet the response from the home crowd was flat. No buzz, no real lift. Just a murmur of acknowledgement and a return to the growing frustration playing out below.
It was not necessarily a judgement on Kenny or Gibbs. It felt more like a verdict on the wider direction of travel.
Alan Browne, the former club captain whose name had been floated for a romantic return, stayed put with Premier League Sunderland. That one, by and large, was out of North End’s hands. But the symbolism stung. The past stayed away. The present remained restless.
Derby stakes rise for Heckingbottom
Which brings everything to Saturday. Blackburn Rovers. A Lancashire derby that always matters, now carrying even more weight.
Each poor result has cranked the tension another notch. Heckingbottom’s record at Preston does not place him favourably alongside recent predecessors, and this start has done nothing to convert sceptics into believers.
He now walks into a derby against a much-depleted Rovers side, the sort of fixture that can either ease the pressure or detonate it.
Derbies are rarely measured, rational occasions at the best of times. In Preston’s current state, this one feels loaded. A win, and the table still looks ugly, but the mood shifts. A defeat, and the apathy that has begun to seep through the fanbase could harden into something far more dangerous for the man in the dugout.
Preston supporters, like most, do not turn quickly once their minds are made up. When belief drains away at Deepdale, it tends not to come back easily.
Apathy among Lilywhites fans has often been the final warning sign for managers before the end. With every loss, with every flat performance, that sense of detachment grows a little stronger.
Saturday will not decide the season on its own. But for Heckingbottom, and for a club already straining under its own discontent, it might just decide how much time he has left to change it.
