Johnson salutes gallant Yeovil

Boss Gary Johnson paid tribute to his new-look Yeovil side after the basement-dwellers held high-flying Preston to a 1-1 draw.

The Glovers, who led through Gozie Ugwu's first-half stoppage-time strike, were heading off the foot of the League One table until North End substitute Sylvan Ebanks-Blake scored his first goal in 21 months 14 minutes from time. It meant Yeovil are still propping up the division on goals scored but, following on from Saturday's win at Bradford, Johnson sees encouraging signs from his patched-up squad. "We came here to Preston with a team that has got two lads making their league debuts and two young, inexperienced centre-backs," said Johnson, who only named five substitutes, two of which were goalkeepers. "I was really pleased with the first-half performance and I thought we deserved that goal. "In the second half they showed their Championship qualities, getting in cross after cross. We dealt with most of them and didn't deal with one. "A 1-1 we'd have took at the start of the game; we're disappointed as we were 1-0 up but that new team in there has got four points in two games. That's what we need to get ourselves out of trouble." The visitors were even dejected they only came away with a share of the spoils but Johnson saw the bigger picture. "If we had gone 1-0 down and then scored a goal in the last minute it would be like we'd just won a cup final," he noted. "I think it was because we were 1-0 up and ended up drawing that the lads were disappointed." Preston boss Simon Grayson was left to reflect on a frustrating night once more as their automatic promotion bid took another hit. North End have now failed to win any of their past four games in all competitions and back-to-back draws at Deepdale have harmed their quest to break into the top two. "We were getting there but are not playing with that belief and confidence we had a few weeks ago," said the ex-Leeds boss. "We've got to try and gather that back very quickly but there's still 20 games to go. "It's disappointing for everybody connected with the club but we'll keep going, regather the troops, rebuild the confidence and get back to winning ways as soon as possible." Heading into half-time North End were behind and the home crowd voiced their displeasure at their side's travails. Grayson shares such anxiety and believes the nervy performance was a reflection of a team currently out of sorts. He added: "It's frustrating for us again that we've dropped two points when on paper we should be picking up those points but football's not played on paper. "We were a little off it first half; you could sense the belief and the confidence is a little bit low at this moment in time."