Ryan Lowe said substitute Milutin Osmajic showed “pure class” as his eight-minute hat-trick completed Preston’s comeback in a 4-1 win over Huddersfield that keeps their Championship play-off hopes alive.
Relegation-battling Huddersfield were the better side in the first half and led through Josh Koroma’s strike four minutes before the break, but Will Keane levelled from the penalty spot early in the second half before Osmajic’s stunning cameo.
The Montenegrin put Preston in front in the 84th minute before scoring again in the 87th minute and the first minute of stoppage time.
“It’s just pure class and he’s got that in him,” Lowe said of the summer signing from Cadiz. “It’s been tough for him, he’s been in and out of the team at certain times…That’s his real hunger and desire to perform for the football club and for his team-mates and he takes all the credit for that.”
There had been a very different mood at half-time, with boos greeting the referee’s whistle as Preston were in danger of letting a top-six finish get out of reach.
“The first half wasn’t us, we weren’t at the races,” Lowe said. “We got them in at half-time and told them they need to be better. I had faith the lads could come out and perform. We changed one or two things, gave them a bit of information and told them they needed to raise it 20 per cent.
“The penalty gave us a bit of a life line to get back in and then there was only one team going to win it.”
The win leaves Preston five points off sixth-placed Norwich, who visit Deepdale on Saturday.
“It’s massively important,” Lowe said of the game. “I’m not going to play it down. Who knows? It might be the biggest one so far. It’s out of our hands what other teams do points-wise. I just want us to stay in the mix. If we can keep climbing up, with five games to go, who knows?”
Huddersfield boss Andre Breitenreiter was left to rue the chances that got away in a strong first half, and said the way his side defended after the break was “not acceptable”.
“When you defend like we did in the second half you cannot get some points,” the German said. “It was terrible, it was poor, too many ball losses.
“We played a really good first half but we missed the final pass to score more goals, we had really good opportunities to score two or three goals and we didn’t do that…
“I cannot tell you my opinion (on the penalty decision) because I didn’t see the clip. But the goal changed everything. Then we have to speak about our own performance and the performance was not good enough.
“After 1-1 there were too many ball losses, we didn’t play as a team, we had bad body language. It was a different game and it was not acceptable for me.”