'Some terrific players' - Man City test pleases Preston North End manager Ryan Lowe

Preston North End manager Ryan Lowe was more than content with his side's friendly test against Manchester City Under-21s.

On Tuesday, North End faced a young City outfit at Euxton and ran out 3-0 winners. The game was arranged to keep Preston's non-international players ticking over during the break, while players stepped up their workloads on return from injury.

The score line suggested a comfortable afternoon for PNE, but the City side's style is similar to the senior team and they played some excellent stuff on the day. Preston's boss saw it as a beneficial 90 minutes and he would happily arrange those kind of fixtures again, in the future.

"Yeah, ideally I didn't want that to be out (there)," said Lowe. "But, the fact is me and Brian Barry-Murphy have got a good relationship. He's got some fantastic, talented youngsters and has been champing at the bit to get across with a team - for his young lads to see what it's like, in the real world. They've got some terrific players. We used it as a training game; we had two mixed teams.

"They had some good chances, we had some good chances and it was a good game of football. Mostly, it was for the injured lads coming back: Hughesy, Jack, Ched getting more minutes and whatnot and lads who haven't really played. It worked well. It was a fantastic little workout and credit to City - they came here and had a real good go of it, with the way they play.

"We'll definitely have more of them, because I think it's important to have those relationships with clubs like Man City - who we can call upon when we need a game, knowing the game is going to be really competitive. So, yeah, it was a fantastic run out. Calvin Ramsay played 45 minutes as well, so the game was for those three mainly. We got minutes into the rest of the lads. They had a day off Wednesday and we'll now double up Thursday, Friday."