Preston North End Saturday 4th November - Kick off 3pm Distance from Coventry Building Society Arena to Deepdale - 125 miles (201km). Travel time - 2 hours 42 minutes. OK. So panic. We lost at home to West Brom last week, and that’s now 3 losses in a row. There’s grumblings on the terraces. And I’m not talking about the aftermath of the pies. The pies are actually really good at the City. 

Today we’re off to Preston, and we haven’t won at Preston since 1951. Hold tight. We drive to the CBS, park up, and head to Greggs for a morning sausage roll. There’s no problem on Earth that a Greggs sausage roll can’t solve. It ticks all the boxes. Warm, crispy, sweet, buttery pastry, with questionable minced animal parts inside. I don’t wanna know. It just tastes so good. 

We board the coach. It’s a bright sunny morning in Coventry. Blogit has bought a pack of Ripples (see Guardian of the Galaxy blog). Scarpa is asleep. There was no way Blogit was sharing his Ripples anyway. With melted, creamy, dreamy chocolate coursing through his veins, Blogit settled in for the trip up the M6 to Preston. Through the Black Country and slicing between Manchester and Liverpool, we know we are in the North again. The sun turns to rain and thoughts turn to KFC. Just a short 0.4 mile (0.65km) walk away. No Uber need this time. 

Scarpa stirs as we pull up to Deepdale. It looks cold outside. We step off the coach. It is cold outside. Blogit it at the age where he feels the cold. And needs the toilet constantly. He should have gone on the coach, but it’s too late now. They cover the 0.4 miles in record time, and there, rising above us, the bright red lights on the KFC, promising crispy chicken. And relief. But a spanner in the works. As we turn the corner to KFC, someone seems to have built a Five Guys. Now here’s a dilemma. Do we do KFC or Five Guys. Well there aren’t that many Five Guys in the UK. 166 in fact. There are 1,463 in the US. We need to make a decision. Quick. And not because our heroes are hungry, but because Scarpa is about to ‘let himself down’. Scarpa suggests we go to Five Guys and say that we went to KFC. Blogit cannot tell a lie (see ALL blogs). We went to Five Guys. 

Blogit appreciated the relief so much, he thought he’d share it with you. Also, as a bonus point, from what film, starring Sacha Baron Cohen, is the sign from? Anyway, I’ve waffled a bit. Back to Preston. Preston has been around for ages, with Roman settlements discovered nearby, with the name deriving from the Latin ‘priests settlement’. So it’s about 1800 years old. As with much of the UK history, not much happened for hundreds of years. Kings (mainly), wars, eating turnips and generally dying of awful diseases in your twenties is what you did. Then we got history books and things became a bit more detailed.

Preston is on the River Ribble, and I only mentioned that because it sounds funny. It’s got a population of about 115,000 people. And Sir Richard Arkwright was born there. He invented the spinning frame, something to do with yarn and using water as a power source. He is known as the ‘father of the modern industrial factory system’. His statue still stands. 

With Five Guys inside us (I’ver been reading 50 Shades), we head to Deepdale. Again, another sell-out away end of 3,000 City fans. Again, the City boys made all the noise. Again, we lost. We went 1 nil up, 3-1 down and pulled it back to 3-2. The American scored both goals. Don’t be fooled. One just hit him, he had no idea. And was offside. The other was a tap in, with the keeper sprawled on the floor. We are in trouble. Big trouble. And talking of trouble, our next away game is at Millwall. It’s been nice knowing you. #pusb