Paul Heckingbottom defended Freddie Woodman after the Preston goalkeeper’s mistake in a 1-1 draw with Oxford in the Championship.
The 27-year-old miscued his pass out from the back and gifted Ruben Rodrigues a 21st-minute opener that was later cancelled out by Will Keane in the 69th minute.
Rodrigues’ opener was Oxford’s only shot of the first half and Preston had wasted numerous chances to score themselves, which Heckingbottom was quick to point out.
Preston boss Heckingbottom said: “The rest of the players gave it away more than Freddie today but he passes it and it’s a goal from the area of the pitch. He’s just not seen the player. It’s as simple as that.
“We were wasteful. We know how well they’ve been doing and we know how well Gary (Rowett) can organise his teams.
“We’ve had 12 or 13 shots in the first half and we had six or seven really good chances and it was really good play against a team that are organised.
“We were prepared for the game. It was more of the same message at half-time.
“They were only going to make it more difficult for us in the second half in terms of denying the space and slowing the game down because they had something to hold on to but we were prepared for that.”
Oxford head coach Gary Rowett saw his perfect record at the club come to an end.
The U’s had won all of his three matches in charge, but he felt his side were fatigued at Deepdale.
“We looked leggy,” Rowett said. “We looked physically like it was our fourth game without making many changes.
“I did think it was a gamble to try and keep that continuity and Preston started the game very well.
“They tried to drag us out of some of those little pockets and whenever our centre-half or our central-midfielder got dragged off, they just started to exploit the space in between and I thought they did it very well and, quite frankly, to come in at half-time 1-0 up was rather fortunate shall we say.
“If we had been 2-0 down, I couldn’t have complained massively but as it was, it was a well-worked goal.”
Rowett felt his switch to a back five helped to stem Preston’s momentum but felt annoyed at the manner of Keane’s equaliser.
“I thought we actually had better control (in the second half),” he added. “I didn’t think they created too many big chances and the one moment was, I don’t want to say fortunate because it was a good ball in, but it looked like we’d dealt with it.
“It looked like (goalkeeper) Jamie (Cumming) might manage to get it and it looked like we might defend it and we didn’t do all three of those things and it was 1-1.
“I thought we were very dogged today to get the point.”
