Preston North End manager hails 'outstanding' side after Lancashire derby win over Blackburn Rovers

Ben Woodburn opened the scoring for North End to take a lead into half time before Ched Evans made it two. Bradley Dack pulled a goal back for Rovers but Evans extended Preston’s lead and Ben Whiteman rounded off the scoring in the snow.

The win lifted North End up to fourth in the Championship table, with more games to come, but was one of their most complete displays of the season.

Lowe said: “We were outstanding, I must say. They took the instructions on spot on, I think the gameplan worked to a tee and the stuff we've been working on.

"Credit where credit is due to the group, they were fantastic. We want to be a little bit more expansive in terms of getting on the front foot and in people's faces. I thought in possession and out of possession we were fantastic today.

“Credit to the group, when you get a hit in terms of injuries and the group sees players going down you could think it's going against you. We've had a fantastic available ratio and to lose so many players in the space of days, it can hurt you. The group are all here today, I made sure they were all here today.

"Whoever plays, it's not about 11, 12 or 13 players it's about the squad and when the squad needs to be utilised like it was today and when opportunities come up you have to take them. That's what they've done today, they were fantastic. The distance from front to back, back to front, we were excellent.”

PNE scored just two minutes into the second half but Blackburn halved the deficit after 55 minutes. With plenty of time still to go in the game it could have been a turning point that saw the home side get back into the contest.

Instead it was Evans and Preston that scored next and Lowe knew of the importance of that goal.

He said: “The second goal was important, we knew we'd get opportunities. I thought the third goal was vitally important as well. When they get a goal back I thought we could have dealt with it a little bit better.

"But I looked around at the group and saw them trying to calm it down and go again, and they did. Credit to the group because they were fantastic after a little setback.

"We could have had five or six would have been nice but we were on the front foot to try and get as many goals as possible. I told the group to keep going and they did just that.”