Preston North End manager Paul Heckingbottom was pleased with a point against Norwich City despite his side dropping two at Deepdale.

The Lilywhites raced into a 2-0 lead within 12 minutes, stunning a shell-shocked Canaries team and becoming huge favourites for the win.

But goals from Borja Sainz and Shane Duffy earned an unlikely draw for City, denying the hosts a fourth consecutive clean sheet and back-to-back victories.

Heckingbottom offered an optimistic verdict post-match, however, saying: “If you forget when the goals were scored and look at it as 2-2, against a team I think are really improving and a good side, I thought we had the better chances and they had more possession.  That was the pattern of the game.

"I am not disappointed with the performance. There are things in there we’re improving all the time. The pleasing thing was how we set about the game. We prepared perfectly, because we got off to a tee with and without the ball.

"When you score the goals too early, the problem was we had players drop into default mode. The last 15 minutes of the first half was the only part of the game where I didn’t like us."

Norwich head coach Johannes Hoff Thorup was forced to change his system at half time to combat the hosts' effective setup, having seen his defence exposed on multiple occasions in the opening period.

Heckingbottom revealed what his strategy was shortly after the final whistle, pinpointing the visiting press as an area Preston exploited.

"We prepare for the opponent in front of us and how they try and play," he continued. "When their wide players jump, the wide forwards jump to our wide centre-backs, so we played a wing-back. Their full-back then jumps to our wing-back and the next pass is down the side.

"We did that twice and got the penalty from it. Then without the ball we changed slightly. One of the improvements they’ve made is how good they are with the ball: they play a lot of short passes centrally and try to draw you right onto them to create the space in behind.

"If we’d have just stayed in our back five without the ball, their front three would’ve pinned us in. So we pushed Robbie (Brady) higher and narrower to be 4-4-2 without the ball.

“Robbie then pinches the ball for the other goal, so all of those things were really important. The only disappointing thing is, when we were 2-0 up, for the last 15 minutes of the first half it was like we were protecting that lead instead of playing the same way. Good technical players, and we invited them too close to our goal. That goal before half time was really disappointing."