Paul Heckingbottom a big fan of Preston match-winner Alfie Devine

Paul Heckingbottom was impressed by Tottenham loanee Alfie Devine after his match-winning display in Preston’s 1-0 win over Derby.

Devine struck in the 29th minute, flashing a shot from just outside the area into the top right corner.

But it was as much Devine’s work off the ball that made Preston boss Heckingbottom sit up and take notice.

“I must admit I do like watching him training and playing,” said Heckingbottom.

“He’s scored a couple of really good goals already but again he knows the game and works hard at the little bits that he probably doesn’t get credit for, like trying to block the one-twos, tracking in the box and getting into good positions to stop forward passes.

“If he didn’t do that and if Lewis (Dobbin) didn’t do that, then they wouldn’t play because we know how hard it is to win games.”

Preston’s first-half performance alone merited the win when Derby looked ponderous and short of any ideas.

But the introduction of Patrick Agyemang sparked County into life and the American international almost equalised in the 65th minute when Daniel Iversen made an instinctive save to deny him.

Preston’s earlier composure was shaken but they defended well and limited Derby to few openings despite the threat of Agyemang.

Heckingbottom said: “I’ve been happy with us throughout the season and the players should be proud of themselves.

“We showed, as you have to do, everything again today. We passed the ball well, caused them problems and although we couldn’t capitalise a little bit more, we scored a fantastic goal.

“Then, as always happens in this league, if there’s only one goal in it, everyone puts their body on the line to make sure we got over the line so all round it was a really good away performance.

Derby head coach John Eustace said: “The first half was nowhere near good enough and we deservedly came in 1-0 down.

“In the second half I thought we were great. The change of shape certainly helped and the performance of Patrick was certainly very good, you can see he’s got huge potential and he’s getting fitter and fitter.

“I think there were lots of positives to take out of the second half, we are still learning about each other as a group and although I’m disappointed to lose the game I thought we did enough to at least get a point.

“I think the change of shape certainly helped. We weren’t aggressive enough and we weren’t on the front foot enough which caused us problems but in the second half we limited them to next to nothing really and we could easily have taken a point.”