Ryan Lowe must make this huge change to stop Preston North End’s poor form

Ryan Lowe’s winless run stretched to five matches against Millwall on Saturday afternoon, where both sides played out a 1-1 draw at Deepdale in what was a pretty uneventful match for large spells.

And with Leeds United coming from behind to beat Norwich City 3-2 at Carrow Road, North End have now slipped to fourth position – so it could be worse at the end of the day, even if the chasing pack are slowly but surely bunching up in behind them.

Clearly, something needs to change to arrest the slumping results for North End, and all it may take is some simple tactical alterations by Lowe himself.

For most of this season so far, Lowe has opted to go with a box midfield, operating with two defensive midfielder and two attacking ones, with wing-backs providing the width on the flanks instead of wingers.

It also means that a singular striker is deployed, and for the first few weeks of the season it was working, but not so much now with a winless run of five matches.

Playing in 11 of the first 12 league matches of the season, Ryan Ledson has been somewhat of a mainstay in Lowe’s midfield, and since Ben Whiteman has now returned to fitness, the two were paired up in the engine room against Millwall.

However, this system didn’t really work as Millwall didn’t offer a great deal in the final third, meaning that there was no real need for two players operating in the same role like Ledson and Whiteman were.

Therefore, for this week’s clash with Southampton onwards, Lowe must surely bring Ledson out of the starting 11 if he wants to bring more of an attacking threat to the opposition.

It would involve Whiteman being the lone holding midfielder with two more advanced players in-front of him, such as Alan Browne and Mads Frøkjær, allowing two strikers to play with each other such as Milutin Osmajic and Will Keane.

The other option is for Lowe to go with a 4-2-3-1, giving Liam Millar a chance to thrive in his best position and also give Duane Holmes a try wide on the right as well.

It’s more likely though that Lowe will stick with his back three, but Ledson perhaps needs to come out in a bid to make the side more attacking in the main change to the system.

There could also be other little tweaks, such as youngster Kian Best coming in for the underperforming Robbie Brady, but the main alteration needed is the withdrawal of Ledson for a player that possesses more creativity and end product in the final third.