Why preston north end

This strong centre-half brought stability to the defence. In the season, Preston finished 7th in the league. Jimmy Maxwell was again top scorer with 19 goals in all competitions. New signing, Hugh O'Donnell , added 15 more. Preston had a disappointing league campaign in only finishing in 14th place. Frank O''Donnell was top scorer with 27 goals. Eleven of these came in cup competitions.

For example, he scored in every round of the FA Cup , including a hat trick in the 4th round against Exeter City and a double against West Bromwich Albion in the semi-final. O'Donnell also scored in the first-half of the cup final against Sunderland.

Preston held the lead until early in the second-half. In the 52nd minute Eddie Burbanks took a corner. Raich Carter headed the ball to Bob Gurney , who back-headed the ball into the net. Carter, was a growing influence on the game and in the 72nd minute he lobbed Sunderland into the lead.

Six minutes later, Patsy Gallacher created a third goal with a skilfully judged pass to Burbanks who shot home from a narrow angle. Carter had led Sunderland to its first FA Cup final victory. At the beginning of the next season, Preston made two important signings. George Mutch repeated the success he had at Manchester United 48 goals in games. Soon after signing he scored two goals in Preston's victory over Everton. Mutch also scored goals in the 4th round against Leicester City and in the semi-final when Preston beat Aston Villa This was the first time that a whole match was shown live on television.

Even so, far more people watched the game in the stadium as only around 10, people at the time owned television sets. No goals were scored during the first 90 minutes and so extra-time was played. In the last minute of extra-time, Bill Shankly put George Mutch through on goal. Alf Young , Huddersfield's centre-half, brought him down from behind and the referee had no hesitation in pointing to the penalty spot.

Mutch was injured in the tackle but after receiving treatment he got up and scored via the crossbar. It was the only goal in the game. In the final match of the season the two teams played each other. During the game Jimmy Milne broke his collarbone in a collision with Alf Kirchen. Ten man Preston lost and Arsenal won the championship.

Bill Shankly had a magnificent season and on 9th April, he won his first international cap when he played for Scotland against England at Wembley. Scotland won with Mutch scoring the only goal of the game. Preston finished in 9th place in the season. Jimmy Dougal was the club's leading scorer with 19 goals. Preston had a good run in the FA Cup until being knocked out by Portsmouth in the sixth round.

The football that Saturday went ahead as Neville Chamberlain did not declare war on Germany until Sunday, 3rd September. The government immediately imposed a ban on the assembly of crowds and as a result the Football League competition was brought to an end. On 14th September, the government gave permission for football clubs to play friendly matches.

In the interests of public safety, the number of spectators allowed to see these games was limited to 8, These arrangements were later revised, and clubs were allowed gates of 15, from tickets purchased on the day of the game through the turnstiles. The government imposed a fifty mile travelling limit and the Football League divided all the clubs into seven regional areas where games could take place.

In the season Preston finished in second place, only two points behind the winners, Bury. After the declaration of war in September , Adolf Hitler did not order the attack of France or Britain as he believed there was still a chance to negotiate an end to the conflict between the countries.

This period became known as the Phoney War. As Britain had not experienced any bombing raids, the Football League decided to start a new competition entitled the Football League War Cup. The entire competition of games including replays was condensed into nine weeks. However, by the time the final took place, the "Phoney War" had come to an end.

In the days leading up to the final, the British Expeditionary Force was being evacuated from Dunkirk. In the first two rounds Preston beat Bury and Bolton.

He also scored a hat-trick in the fourth-round tie against Manchester City. Preston reached the final by beating Newcastle United Preston played Arsenal in front of a 60, crowd. Arsenal was awarded a penalty after only three minutes but Leslie Compton hit the foot of the post with the spot kick.

Preston dominated the rest of the match but Dennis Compton managed to get the equaliser just before the end of full-time. The replay took place at Ewood Park, the ground of Blackburn Rovers.

The first goal was as a result of a move that included Tom Finney and Jimmy Dougal before Robert Beattie put the ball in the net. Frank Gallimore put through his own goal but from the next attack, Beattie scored again.

It was the final goal of the game and Preston ended up the winners of the cup. The nineteen year old Andrew McLaren scored all six goals in the victory. There is no doubt that during this period Preston was the best football club in England. During the season Tom Finney played in 41 games. Top scorers for that season were: Dougal 32 and McLaren It has been argued by Jack Rollin Soccer at War: that: "The first club to benefit from a youth policy to any marked degree was Preston North End, who owed success in to their exceptional pre-war structure.

By the club was already running two teams in local junior circles when the chairman James Taylor decided upon a scheme to fill the gap between school leavers and junior clubs by forming a Juvenile Division of the Preston and District League open to year-olds. Rollin points out that by over youngsters were being trained in groups of eight of the club's senior players voluntarily assisting in evening coaching.

Robert Beattie was one of those involved in this coaching. This great Preston team was broken up by the Second World War. The British Army invited some of the best footballers to became Physical Training instructors at Aldershot.

Others served abroad. Seventy professional football players were killed during the Second World War. Taylor scored a hat trick while playing as a guest for Middlesbrough against Bradford City on 4th April He was killed in a motor cycle accident six days later. While some footballers joined the armed forces, others found occupation in the support services. I am not quite sure that we shall succeed in attaining all the objects with which we set out; it is not a certainty that we shall carry any The break-up of the Everton team as we knew it last season may have a good deal in influencing the future of the Union.

Liverpool was our headquarters, you know, and our registered offices were there. But the secretary, John Cameron, has gone to London and Bell the chairman will not, as far as I know, play for anybody. The official website of the Football League claims that the first football manager to bring in night matches, under floodlight, was Herbert Chapman of Huddersfield, in the late s.

In fact, it had been tried before, in Birmingham and Lincoln but the lighting wasn't powerful enough to make the game visible, and maybe Herbert was the first manager to introduce floodlit football on a regular basis, but Alfred Frankland and a squad of engineers from Dick, Kerr's English Electric factory actually managed to make floodlit football a possibility.

The unique relationship which existed between the company and the Army barracks at Fulwood was the key, and Dick, Kerr's engineers came up with the solution. Two Army surplus searchlights should do the trick. So, these were duly ordered from the War Office - can you believe it?

To augment those, 40 carbide flares were put into position around the edge of the pitch, also supplied by Frankland's contacts in Fulwood barracks. Flares were placed at the turnstiles and to celebrate this extraordinary occasion not one, but three brass bands were requisitioned to lead torch-lit processions of spectators to the ground.

And the Pathe News team was alerted to this experimental exercise in pre Christmas jollity and turned out to make of it what they could. As a spectacle, it was far more exciting than any of the previous Christmas processions and celebrations for which Lancashire is famous. Men in flat caps, women in large hats, small children skipping along, processed to the Deepdale ground, so that later they could tell their own children, 'I was there when we played football by searchlight!

Back to their old selves. Lily did her Blind-Man's Buff impression, mimicking searching for little Jennie Harris through the dark by touch only. It could all have gone horribly wrong, but I doubt it, because even horribly wrong would have been funny.

And it was. Hilarious mayhem ensued. Picture it - on the touchline was the famous Bob Holmes whom I've mentioned before, throwing whitewashed balls on to the pitch, in the stands were scores of big lusty Lancashire lasses with their husbands, doubled up with laughter, and on the pitch were Lily and Alice and the others, wondering what damage they could do in the darkness.

Except that it wasn't dark. It was glaringly bright, until one of the searchlights got an airlock and went out barely into the first half. Then one of the searchlight operators from the factory became very excited by a defensive tackle, and turned up his searchlight so strongly that both attacker and defender were temporarily blinded and keeled over. Then Jennie Harris, as willing as ever, kept making searching runs up the left, only to be halted by the sudden glare of flash-bulbs and skied the ball from 5 yards out.

Although football dominated my early life - that should probably read my entire life come to think of it - opportunities for watching the game were restricted. Apart from anything else, I was always too busy playing. But as a proud Prestonian, I was acutely aware of Preston North End Football Club and, in common with the other lads who kicked a rubber ball around the back fields of Holme Slack, my dream was to be the next Alex James.

James was the top star of the day, a genius. There wasn't much about him physically, but he had sublime skills and the knack of letting the ball do the work. He wore the baggiest of baggy shorts and his heavily gelled hair was parted down the centre. On the odd occasion when I was able to watch a game at Deepdale, sometimes sneaking under the turnstiles when the chap on duty was distracted, I was in awe of James.

Preston were in the Second Division and the general standard of football was not the best, but here was a magic and a mystery about James that mesmerised me.

The man behind Preston's capture of James was chairman Jim Taylor, who later signed me and went on to play a major part in my early career. The son of a railwayman and a native of North Lanarkshire, Alex James was a steelworker when his football talents were first spotted by Raith Rovers in the year of my birth.

Preston were always well served with 'spies' in Scotland and while his short stature and dubious temperament caused a few potential buyers to dither, Jim Taylor was more bullish. Taylor had his man and the signing of James proved a masterstroke. He was box office, the draw card, a player who grabbed your attention and refused to let go.

James was a character off the field, too. He liked clubs - of the night-time variety - owned a car and, by all accounts, enjoyed playing practical jokes on his colleagues. But he was also a perfectionist, a footballer acutely aware of both his ability and his responsibility. The experts scratched their heads about why his talent was being allowed to languish outside the top flight and it wasn't long before Arsenal came in to present him with a bigger stage.

He was my first football hero and my role model and when he was transferred to the Gunners I thought I would never get over it. The kickabouts we had in the fields and on the streets were daily events, sometimes involving dozens and dozens of kids.

There were so many bodies around you had to be flippin' good to get a kick. But the Lilywhites had an array of top quality forwards and played five at one time with the formation In addition to this, the little Scotsman grabbed 38 FA Cup goals in 36 games. Netting 20 goals in 21 games in the league, he also bagged goals in pre-league games.

All of the forwards for PNE nearly had a goal a game ratio or better, something that you would be hard-pressed to see one striker at a club achieve, let alone five. Preston won the league at a canter, 11 points ahead of Aston Villa, coincidentally the same amount Arsenal won the league by. North End also became the first ever team to win the double, lifting the FA Cup after disposing of Wolverhampton Wanderers at the Oval. This is a record that is hardly likely to ever be approached.

It certainly cannot be surpassed. The league was formed as North End were petering out. Although they won the league in consecutive seasons, there is a sense of underachievement for how good they really were — much like Arsenal. In , the London club had domestic dominance but not much else. They were shocked in the League Cup as Middlesbrough brushed them aside in a two-legged affair. The Gunners failed to retain the title the following season, once again showing their short-term superiority.

Amongst their ranks were some world-class players. Thierry Henry and Dennis Bergkamp, two of the most gifted forwards the English top tier has ever seen, comprised a star-studded front line. But, although not household names, the Lilywhites had a number of forwards who have superior goalscoring records than that of Henry and Bergkamp.

Taking everything into account, they are similar. From to , they spent only two seasons outside of the First Division, recording solid results along the way. Finney remains the greatest player in the history of the club as he went on to spend his entire career in Preston, scoring goals in appearances.

A takeover by heating manufacturer Baxi, which owned the club from to , gave the club some time to recover. During this period, Preston managed to establish itself as a second-tier team, but started facing further financial troubles by the end of the decade. The team was then taken over by Trevor Hemmings, a Lancashire businessman and long-time fan.

Manchester City.