It's Samba Time At Deepdale

[Alan75]

Rovers cruised to a 3-0 victory against Preston, in their final pre-season friendly, with goals from Andre Ooijer in the first half and two from Chris Samba in the second half.

Rovers new signing Santa Cruz made his debut for the club when he came on for the final 25 minutes of the game.

Match Comments from RevidgeBlue

Very enjoyable afternoon out - turned into little more than a training exercise given that Preston were so desperately poor. If that's the best they can do this season they're stuffed.

Also whilst there was a very decent turn out from Rovers, it was a woeful home turnout, two sides of the ground were not in operation and they couldn't even fill one side of the ground! I know we're not not Man Ure in terms of a draw but I thought the fixture would be more attractive to them than that. Perhaps the sale of Nugent has hit them hard.

On the pitch there was also a huge gulf in class despite us rarely having to get out of first or second gear.

Not that much to comment on from our side really, it was so easy, but I must disagree with something superstella said midweek about Dunn not being fit.

In the games against Vetra and today I think Dunn has looked very sharp, extremely eager to impress, and always looking for, or making himself available for, the ball. Getting a close up view of him today, it also appears that he has lost a heck of a lot of weight since last season as well.

Cruz did very well when he came on and looks as though he will contribute a lot more in terms of his all round play than Mccarthy. Whether or not he can find the back of the net with anything like the same regularity remains to be seen of course.

No real help from today's mismatch as to our prospects for next Saturday, but you can only beat the opposition put in front of you and on that basis Rovers did a thoroughly professional job today. For a team like Preston, two or three goals down, "seeing off" McCarthy and Roberts and then watching two players like Cruz and Derbyshire coming on must be a sickening sight and is no doubt exactly what Mark Hughes wanted.