Preston North End are doing some early transfer business as they look to capitalise on their good 2020-21 end of season form under Frankie McAvoy when they return to the pitch in August.

Alex Neil’s former assistant won five out of his eight games in charge - the only blot on his copybook being a 5-0 home drubbing by Brentford - and the results were enough for McAvoy to be given the head coach role on a permanent basis.

He’s already got to work on adding some fresh and also familiar faces to the North End ranks - Sepp van den Berg has returned on loan from Liverpool, Liam Lindsay has re-joined from Stoke City on a permanent basis and there’s a brand new man in the attacking midfield department as Izzy Brown has arrived following his release from Chelsea.

There’s more to come though and the new faces will get their bow at Deepdale on August 7 when Hull City come to town for the first game of the Championship season - let’s look at how McAvoy could choose to line-up the Lilywhites on that afternoon.

Declan Rudd hasn’t seen a minute of competitive action since January, with a knee injury ruling him out for the second half of the 2020-21 campaign.

In came the big Dane that is Daniel Iversen from Leicester City, who had been sitting on the bench for the first half of the season at Belgian side OH Leuven.

Many probably didn’t know what to expect from Iversen but he was a revelation for the Lilywhites, making some crucial stops in many games and hardly made any mistakes.

There’s an apparent verbal agreement between North End and the Foxes for Iversen’s return later in the summer, so PNE fans will get to see him live in action when the season begins you would assume.

It looks as though McAvoy will stick with the 3-5-2 formation that he ended the season with and the system that Alex Neil hardly used, and Van den Berg looks like he will be the right-sided centre-back of the three.

With no Darnell Fisher replacement arriving in January, it was up to Van den Berg to fill in in an unnatural position at right-back and then right-wing-back.

Whilst the teenager did well, his natural position is a centre-back and McAvoy has said himself that the Dutchman will be given a go in a back three, so it will be interesting to see how he gets on in his preferred role.

North End have a lot of depth at the back now and they have brought back Liam Lindsay after his loan spell.

The Scot was highly-rated at Barnsley and was snapped up by Stoke in 2019, but it didn’t go well for him in Staffordshire and he was pretty much exiled when North End rescued him in February.

Lindsay did suit McAvoy’s back three system as the central one of the trio - the one who headed the most balls away and he even got himself on the end of two at the other end of the pitch in terms of goals in his 13 matches.

McAvoy saw enough to offer him a permanent gig at Deepdale and he will now be looking to prove a point to Stoke to show them what they have been missing.

Despite Lindsay being left-footed, he probably wouldn’t suit playing on the left of a three, whilst Paul Huntington and Patrick Bauer are also probably more suited to being the central man - the latter is just getting back fit from a bad achilles injury.

Jordan Storey could probably easily play on the left but Andrew Hughes played well enough under McAvoy and also appeared in every single minute, so the Scot clearly trusts Hughes.

Hughes has probably been quite inconsistent over his three years at North End but in that left centre-back role he started to show some kind of consistency and it’s his role to lose.

When North End sold Darnell Fisher late on in the January transfer window to Middlesbrough, they did not replace him, leaving them with just Joe Rafferty as a natural right-back.

Midfielder Alan Browne and then Van den Berg were favoured there though but now is the time for a natural wing-back to come in through the door and it looks like that could be happening imminently.

Rotherham United’s American international Matthew Olosunde is close to signing for the Lilywhites and even though he had to rotate with Wes Harding in his position last season, Olosunde still showed enough for PNE to target him.

At the age of 23, Olosunde has time on his side to improve further as well and considering the club got their last right-back in Fisher from a relegated Rotherham side and he turned out to be decent, then it bodes well.

It doesn’t look like a new left-wing-back is on the transfer list of McEvoy, which means that Greg Cunningham and Josh Earl - fresh off a loan spell at Burton Albion - will be battling for the spot.

Earl burst onto the scene in 2017 but he was never the finished article and he’s been on several loan stints over the past few years.

He’s probably not quite ready to usurp the recently returned Cunningham though, but the Ireland international needs to prove that he can remain fit for a full season or else Earl will be getting his chance.

Cunningham missed a month of action following his PNE return and played just 11 times out of a possible 20 matches but there’s hope that he can stay injury-free and if so he will be McAvoy’s first choice.

When it was clear that Ben Pearson wasn’t going to sign a new deal at Deepdale in January, North End moved quickly to beat divisional rivals to the signing of Doncaster Rovers skipper Ben Whiteman.

Whilst he’s not in the Pearson mould - think more now retired Paul Gallagher - Whiteman has a Manchester United pedigree just like Pearson and you can tell he has a lot of class which convinced PNE to spend £1.5 million on him.

Whiteman probably wasn’t seen to best effect in his debut half-season with North End, but he finally started to show what he was about towards the end of the campaign, forming a partnership with Ryan Ledson and he even burst into the box - a trait that fans have been wanting him to show - to score with a header against Derby County.

Next season is where Whiteman can truly show he can be a classy operator at Championship level and he should be a starter for the money that was spent on him.

Having not featured regularly at all in the previous two seasons, Ledson stepped up to the plate in 2020-21 to become the aggressor in midfield - before and after Ben Pearson’s departure - and his performances earned him PNE’s Player of the Year award.

Despite not being the North End skipper, Ledson was probably the biggest leader on the pitch at times and what he’s never going to lack is commitment to the cause.

He forged a partnership with Ben Whiteman in the latter stages of the season and you’d expect that to be rekindled on the opening day of the campaign against the Tigers.

The number 10 role in McAvoy’s formation is probably the most competitive on the whole pitch - you have Brad Potts who has his merits, Jamaica international Daniel Johnson who was injured when McAvoy took charge but can score lots of goals when on-song, and of course the new signing in Izzy Brown.

But considering he is the club captain and he’s done his best work in this position a few seasons ago, Alan Browne has to get the nod.

The Ireland international is at his best when pressing from the front and it’s what served him well when he netted 12 Championship goals in the 2018-19 campaign, but last season saw him shifted around the pitch, mainly in either a deeper midfield role or at right-back.

It could be time to put him back in his best position though, although McAvoy will have to do a lot of rotation work to please every attacking midfielder he has on the books.

North End look set to go after a new striker this summer but they may have to wait a little while for options to become available - what you can say though is that on the strength of his performances last season then Ched Evans is the undisputed number one choice.

Lots of fans questioned as to why Alex Neil wanted a 32-year-old striker who had scored just five times in League One to come in midway through the season, but when Evans finally got a run of games it was clear to see his abilities were what North End had been missing.

His ability to hold the ball up and bring others into play was a key asset and he also managed to net five goals for PNE in 21 outings, which was a respectable enough record.

Could he hit double figures over a full season? Who knows, and it will also be interesting to see how receptive fans are inside Deepdale to him wearing the Lilywhites shirt considering the initial backlash from many.

With Evans being the first choice, you’d imagine that any new striker signing would partner him, but there’s been nothing in the way of players linked so a current option will have to do for now.

McAvoy has plenty to choose from but no-one really made a strong case in the final eight games of the campaign.

Emil Riis scored just twice last season and didn’t do much in the final few matches, Tom Barkhuizen can do a job and is energetic but he didn’t score much either, Sean Maguire isn’t the same player he once was and that leaves Scott Sinclair.

Sinclair was North End’s top scorer last season with nine goals but McAvoy started him just twice in his eight matches in charge - keeping him rooted to the bench for four of them.

The former Celtic man seemingly didn’t fit into a central striker role but he was given the chance in the final game of the season against Nottingham Forest - and he showed the attributes required to burst clear and set up Tom Bayliss for the equaliser, even though it was heading into the back of the net.

Sinclair definitely deserves a chance to start next season, especially if another striker doesn’t immediately come in, and he could form a fruitful partnership with Evans.