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Grayson targets promotion

Image: Simon Grayson: Every win is important

Preston manager Simon Grayson set his sights on promotion following a milestone 1-0 win over Peterborough at the ABAX Stadium.

Grayson's 100th match at the North End helm ended in his 50th victory and was secured by a first goal for the club from on-loan Jermaine Beckford. The striker borrowed from Bolton opened his account in first-half stoppage time with a classy finish after being picked out by fellow forward Kevin Davies. And that proved to be enough to earn maximum points for a Preston side who had earlier hit the crossbar through a rising Paul Gallagher shot. Grayson, who has taken Blackpool, Leeds and Huddersfield up from League One, said: "Every win is important, but it is promotions that I want on my CV. "We had to dig in at times, especially late on when under plenty of pressure. "Jermaine could already have scored a few goals for us, but he showed his class to take that chance. "His confidence was low when he came in, but he is the sort of player who will always score goals. "Ideally we needed a second goal to make things more comfortable, but we are always confident we can keep teams out due to the number of clean sheets we are keeping." Peterborough boss Darren Ferguson claimed match-winner Beckford was lucky to stay on the pitch in the second half. Ferguson felt referee Darren Sheldrake had no option other than to send off the already-booked striker shortly after half-time following a challenge on Michael Bostwick. Ferguson also insisted his team were highly unfortunate to suffer a fourth successive home league defeat after putting Preston under stacks of second-half pressure. However, Posh failed to break through a miserly North End rearguard who kept a 10th away clean sheet of the campaign. Ferguson said: "Beckford actually won the ball in that incident, but the referee gave a foul for a late challenge. It had to be a booking in that case and there is no question he bottled the decision to send him off. "I feel really hard done by as I think we were very unlucky to lose a tight game of football. "We conceded a horrendous goal with only seconds of the first half to go and that has proved costly. "Preston win a lot of away games 1-0 and it is not difficult to see why. We pushed and pushed in the second half, but just couldn't get an equaliser. "The positive is that we are still only one point outside the play-offs despite such a terrible run."

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