Preston still have time to make improvements

[BBC] [Getty Images] There is a danger after any opening-day defeat of reading too much into 90 minutes. For Preston North End though, Saturday's 2-1 loss at Bolton Wanderers feels less like the beginning of a new problem and more like the continuation of an old one. North End ended last season with a whimper. After 34 Championship games they had 49 points and were sitting eighth, having spent much of the campaign in and around the play-off places. They took just 11 points from their final 12 matches to eventually finish 14th. The concern for Preston supporters was not simply the team had fallen away from the play-off picture, it was the manner of the decline. There were heavy reverses at Coventry and Norwich, three-goal defeats by Oxford and Southampton, and losses to West Brom and Birmingham City. The defence, in particular, became increasingly difficult to trust. That made the summer an important one for Paul Heckingbottom and the club's recruitment team. Preston have not been inactive. Lee Nicholls, Leo Leroy and Harry Clarke have arrived, while Alfie Devine has returned permanently after his loan spell and Jusef Erabi and Delano Burgzorg have joined on loan. But recruitment is not simply about counting arrivals - it is about whether the squad is better and that is where questions remain. Lewis Dobbin, Daniel Jebbison and Milos Lukovic returned to their parent clubs then Robbie Brady, Will Keane and Jamal Lewis also departed the club. Most significantly, captain Ben Whiteman has now left for Wrexham. Whiteman had made 224 appearances for Preston since joining in 2021 and had become one of the most recognisable figures of the modern North End side. In the end, this departure on the face of it, looks like a good solution for all parties - we wish him all the best in the other 44 games for Wrexham this season. However, there is a much bigger question around the defence. Andrew Hughes and Jordan Storey have both been at Deepdale since 2018. Liam Lindsay has been there since 2021. That is a remarkable amount of continuity for a Championship defence. Especially when North End conceded 62 league goals last season and at Bolton the warning signs appeared again. Sam Dalby put the hosts ahead after 14 minutes before Thierry Gale doubled the advantage. Preston eventually responded through Erabi in the closing stages, but by then they had given themselves too much to do. There will understandably be calls for patience. It is the first weekend of August. New players need time to settle. Heckingbottom deserves the opportunity to work with the squad he has been given. But patience should not mean ignoring a pattern. Preston's final quarter of last season was poor. Their summer recruitment has left questions about whether the squad has genuinely moved forward and their opening-day performance suggested some of the weaknesses from last season remain. That is why Saturday's defeat feels significant, not because one game should define a season but because it has reopened questions Preston supporters have been asking for months. The challenge now is not simply to recover from one defeat to Bolton. It is to prove that this is a different Preston North End to the one that limped over the line in May, there's still time to make the improvements needed for a successful Championship season.