Preston v Swansea Competition - Sky Bet Championship Venue - Deepdale Date - 5 November 2025 Kick off - 7:45pm Following their battling 1-1 away draw at Charlton, next up for Alan Sheehan’s Swansea squad is another tricky looking away match, this time at Preston. Last Saturday, the Swans fought back to claim a point at The Valley as Adam Idah's sharp finish cancelled out Charlie Kelman's first Charlton Athletic goal. Summer signing Kelman steered in from close range via the underside of the bar when the Swans failed to deal with Conor Coventry's hopeful ball into the box in the opening seconds of the second half. But the Swans deservedly levelled as Republic of Ireland international Idah scored only his second goal – and his first from open play – since his £6m move from Celtic two months ago. After volleying one effort narrowly over, Idah was given time to turn 20 yards from goal and took full advantage, arrowing a low shot into the net via the base of the post. The draw extends Charlton's unbeaten run to four games, and means they have now lost only once in their past 23 home fixtures in all competitions. Nathan Jones' team drop to eighth in the table, while the Swans are down to 16th and will feel frustrated not to have taken all three points. Alan Sheehan's side had more control than their hosts, and missed a golden chance to win it when Josh Key shot over in added time. Whilst the Swans were drawing at Charlton, Preston inflicted yet more misery on Southampton as they won at St Mary's and the Saints dropped to 21st in the Championship table. The Lilywhites took the lead with a scrappy goal through Lewis Dobbin in the first half and doubled their lead late on thanks to Mads Frokjaer-Jensen. Will Still's Southampton side have only won twice in the league all season and that lack of success has resulted in Still being subsequently sacked. After going behind, Southampton fans chanted for their Sport Republic owners to "get out" of their club, and booed their side off the pitch at the break and full-time, ‘helping’ no doubt in causing Still’s departure. The Swans have played Preston on 73 previous occasions, winning 30, drawing 19 and losing 24. In the corresponding match last season, the teams played out a goalless draw. Turning to tomorrow evening, I think that the Swans are more than capable of returning to South Wales with a point, although 3 are really needed to kick start a charge to the Play-Off places. 1-1
Defeat would be par for course. I know we are capable of winning it, I just don’t have any faith in the type of performance we’ll put in. Last few games it’s seemed like we’ve been intense for the first 5 or 10 mins and then revert to type. Maybe we need to score during that initial push.
Lets be positive about tomorrow...its Bonfire night so there will be plenty of displays to watch on the long journey oop north...plenty of room in the away stand about 350 tickets having been sold at £10 per head...AS knows how to set up his 3rd game in a week hopefully with the team that finished on Saturday in the absence of Vipotnik.....baring any silly mistakes we will win 2 or 3 -1
Let's hope the tenner price should be reciprocated when we make our usual night visit later on in the season
This is where I am as well The pre-season hype train's gone off the rails. I'm still dumbfounded as to what happened from last season to this, regarding AS's dynamic team performances when he took over. Especially considering the better squad we have now.
He's basically saying that everyone else is ripping people off so why shouldn’t we ? He’s saying £7 year on year, but what’s that as a percentage raise ? Even on a ticket that’s £35 it’s a 20% rise.
I seem to have a vague recollection that this fixture last season looked like a match from Covid times there were so few fans…..
Per the Swans this morning: “Malick Yalcouye will be available for selection following his three-match suspension. Swans top-scorer Zan Vipotnik will be assessed ahead of the trip to Deepdale after the striker picked up a quad injury in training. Marko Stamenic is on compassionate leave following a family bereavement.” Vipotnik will not play - I was told that when they left at 14:15 yesterday he wasn’t on the coach…. (They are returning by plane)
Ethan Galbraith: "We have to be ready to go again. In this league, there are no easy games, no one feels sorry for you. So we have to prepare and go out and perform, it’s as simple as that. “We just need to keep working, and we know we need to kill games off when we have the chances and are in the ascendancy. “We have been having good spells in games, but it’s that final bit we need to get better at. “We are confident in our abilities, we want to kick on. Everyone wants to win and we want to try and get as far up the table as we can.” Stuart McCall: “They get about the game and they'll make it tough for us. Every team you come up against presents their own challenges and no doubt they’ll be no different. “If you look back at our game we had against them last season when Alan Sheehan had just gone in as manager, it was a 0-0, but we played well that night. We just missed too many opportunities so we'll take the same performance but hopefully we can put away some of the opportunities we create.”
Anthony Backhouse is the man in the middle for for this evening's clash at Deepdale. Backhouse has been an EFL referee since 2017 and became the first Cumbrian official for more than 40 years to be added to the EFL Referee list. His career highlights to date include refereeing the National League Play-Off Final in 2017, being Fourth Official in the 2022 FA Trophy Final and referee in the FA Vase Final in 2023. He last took charge of a Swans game in the 2-0 win at Sheffield Wednesday at Hillsborough in August. He will be assisted by Andrew Fox and Shaun Hudson on Wednesday. Josh Smith will be the fourth official.
