Preston boss should take a look at his own side after ‘horrific’ tackles, says Boro boss

Graham Westley says Preston North End manager Phil Brown should take a look at his own side after the Stevenage manager accused his Preston counterpart of ‘disrespecting’ his players.

The two sides drew 0-0 on Saturday in a game of few chances while Westley said he was forced to substitute Chris Beardsley at half time because of the home side’s ‘horrific’ challenges.

Reacting to what he felt were jibes from Brown in the build-up to the game about his side’s recent non-league status, Westley said: “The boy went through Beardo first half and he was lucky to stay on the pitch in my book.

“Their manager has spent all afternoon talking about ‘non-league, non-league’ and disrespecting our players all afternoon.

“He wants to have a look at his own team and have a think about some of the conduct going on out there because I thought some of their challenges were horrific.”

Saturday was a day for goalkeepers as both Thorsten Stuckmann and Chris Day made valuable saves, and afterwards Westley said both teams had had chances to win the match but his side failed to take advantage of a high number of set pieces they were awarded.

“I suppose you could look at it in the end and say it could have gone either way, in the sense that Darius [Charles] and Byron [Harrison] forced great saves from their ‘keeper and the chance they had which forced a great save from Daisy at the far post,” Westley said.

“But if you look at the corner count it probably tells the story that we put them under a lot of pressure through the 90 minutes and had our sets been of a better quality, had we not put so much into the goalkeeper’s hands, then we might well be sitting here with three points.

“On the whole our defensive record stays in tact, another clean sheet, in terms of our defending we look organised and solid, and sides aren’t really catching us out in terms of surprising us and we’re working hard in that regard.

“In an attacking sense I’m disappointed to get a blank even though I thought some of our play deserved to create more than it did.”