On the whole, the 2019/20 season has been a reasonably positive one for Preston North End.

With nine games of the campaign remaining, Alex Neil's side are currently sixth in the Championship standings, one point ahead of seventh-placed Bristol City in the battle for the final play-off place.

As a result, there is still a good chance that this could be the season in which Preston finally end their long wait to secure a place in the Premier League for next season.

However, the campaign has not been without its problems for North End, who have still endured some disappointment across the course of the season so far.

Here, we take a look at the two worst moments that Preston have had to face through the course of the 2019/20 campaign to date.

Back to back home defeats over the festive period

For much of the first half of the campaign, Preston were a nigh on imperious force on their home turf at Deepdale, with only promotion-chasing West Brom picking up a win during Preston's first 12 home league games of the season - and even that came courtesy of a controversial late penalty.

All that would change however, at the turn of the year, as Preston saw both Reading and Middlesbrough make the trip to Deepdale and come away with comfortable 2-0 wins, on the 29th December and New Year's Day respectively.

Not only will the level of performance they put in over those two games be a disappointment for Preston, but the fact that these two sides found themselves looking over their shoulder at the wrong end of the table ahead of their trip to Lancashire, means these were two big missed opportunities for North End this season, and you wonder how costly they could be in the race for the play-offs come the end of the campaign.

Preston 1-3 QPR

Another home defeat that will have stung particularly hard for Preston, was the one they suffered last time out against QPR.

Coming off the back of two straight away defeats to fellow promotion chasers West Brom and Fulham, North End will have been desperate to pick up a win to cement their place in the play-off places, and it looked like they had a good chance to do just that, when Rangers midfielder Geoff Cameron was sent off with the score locked at 1-1 and more than 20 minutes of the game remaining.

However, it was the visitors who would rally from their setback stronger, with subsequent goals from Ryan Manning and Eberechi Eze securing all three points for the ten men, making this another big opportunity missed by Preston in the race to secure a play-off place.