Salford City were victorious in their midweek trip to Preston in the EFL (Carabao) cup, with the Ammies winning 4-2 on penalties.
Despite a difficult challenge playing a team much higher in the EFL system, Neil Wood was confident in his team going into the game.
Neil Wood said: “Its a good start to follow up from the win at Forest Green on Saturday, Preston are in the championship so we knew it would be a hard game, a game we came into thinking we could win.
“They [Preston] finished the game with a strong team out there, which caused us quite a few problems and we had to defend well. But we still had chances to get on the ball and play and we opened them up a couple of times, and maybe we could have scored the winner towards the end.”
The game was tough and was good battle throughout, with Preston making some subs at half time and vastly improving in the second half, after Salford took a very early lead in the game and looked the better side in the opening stages.
Neil Wood said: “We played our better stuff in the first half when we got the ball we move it well and effectively, got into good positions, ideally we could have been more composed in the final third, Connor took his gold really well he constantly looked dangerous, conceding just before half time was a killer because it’s a horrible time to concede.
“Second half we had some good moments but we were matters of our downfall really, we made some mistakes which is expected. Their second goal we shouldn’t concede the way we did, but they are a talented team with some very talented players.”
Salford City haven’t progressed through into the second round of the cup in a couple of years. Beating Preston to make it through to the next round means they could face a huge team in the next round.
Neil Wood said: “It would obviously be nice to have a big team in the next round, but we want to progress,
so we’ll take whatever comes and we will take to that challenge head on. Last year we went to Bolton and you could see the strength that they had, we were still trying to embed who we were, a year down the line, I think our squad is in a much better place, the way we play has made huge steps forward and I think that gives the players confidence to come to a place like here (Deepdale) tonight. We felt we could come and win the game.”
He continued: “I think when you think of the level of the opposition, they showed us a bit of respect with the changes they had to make at half time. They strengthened again during the second half, what we are proud of is coming to somewhere like here and imposing how we play.
“We know we aren’t going to control the whole game against an opposition like this, it’s not possible because of their quality, but especially the first half we managed to impose urselves on them. this gives us big satisfaction.”
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