Preston North End got off to a disappointing start in the Sky Bet Championship season, as they were beaten 4-1 by newly promoted Hull City at Deepdale.

Despite some good periods of play from Preston, they were blown away in the final periods of the game as The Tigers won comprehensively in the end.

North End face Reading at the Select Car Leasing Stadium on Saturday. Here are a couple of dilemmas for the North End boss to consider:

Morale and mentality

After Saturday's performance and result against Hull, there were some interesting comments made by a couple of North End players regarding the mood around the club, something that McAvoy will have to change pretty quickly if his side are going to make this season a successful one. These comments also reflected on what has been a difficult pre-season for the club, which has resulted in negative feelings from supporters, and the 4-1 battering showed little signs of encouragement.

Tom Barkhuizen was the first of those, despite being arguably one of North End's better performers on the day. After full time he had this to say in the club's iFollow post-match interview: "Whenever we get beat, we seem to get battered, so that’s obviously a mentality thing we need to change.

"It’s not been the best pre-season results-wise, and there has been a bit of negativity off the pitch, which you can understand – the people are frustrated, they want us to go and spend money, they want us to bring more players in. A 4-1 defeat isn’t going to help that, it probably justifying the people who have been negative, they’re gonna be sat at home probably thinking ‘well we’re right’."

North End captain Alan Browne was also left extremely disappointed in how his side were dominated from start to finish by the Championship newcomers: "We gave them too much respect and not being funny, they just came up from League One and we should be getting in their faces, making them know they are back in the Championship."

Formation change causing problems

McAvoy did change his side's formation half-way through the game, despite performing reasonably in the first half. Initially, the change seemed to have worked quite well, and for the first 10 or so minutes it was North End who were in the ascendancy.

However, defensively they continued to be suspect, and despite Hull's players performing to a high standard, McAvoy will be aware that the third and fourth goal was so straightforward and could've been dealt with, something the Scot touched on in his post-match interview with Lancashire Live, saying: "We looked really fragile in a back four scenario."

Another problem at times for Preston going forward was the lack of ideas, especially when switching to a lone man up front. Despite causing problems on the wings early on, it was clear Hull had snuffed out that problem but despite a handful of individual efforts and mistakes from Hull, all attacking threat seemed to have dissipated.

The diamond formation that North End changed to clearly didn't work, and in their 3-0 win at Mansfield, McAvoy stuck with a 3-5-2 formation, something that looks highly likely to continue at Reading on Saturday.

If McAvoy is to stick with 3-5-2, there could be a selection headache ahead of Saturday after Scott Sinclair got his first goals of the season, despite not featuring at all on Saturday.