It may have been another crucial three points for the Lilywhites in the derby win over Burnley but North End boss Alan Irvine has said that there will be no celebrations until they are mathematically safe from relegation. But the PNE boss was delighted with his side in the short-term after they battled their way to a 2-1 win over the local rivals.

"I'm absolutely delighted," smiled Irvine in the post-match press conference.

"We started the game very well, could probably have been out of sight. We scored one very good goal and missed two good chances, three if you count the rebound.

"You know that you can't keep affording to do that, you know that a team like Burnley are capable of hurting you, they've got a lot of good creative players and sure enough we ended up being caught out at a corner we didn't defend very well and the deflection beat Andy Lonergan.

"We had to come back from that, it was probably a very entertaining first half for everybody, maybe not so much in the second half but it was easier for me to watch the second half that's for sure."

Preston's win temporarily took them up a couple more places in the league but it was the distance between the teams below them in the table that will be key come the end of the season. North End got a little more breathing space but Irvine won't relax until he knows that his side have assured Championship football for next season.

"The champagne is still on ice, it's not enough, I don't believe that 50 points is enough, you just have to look at how tight it is from the bottom up, I really don't believe that 50 points would be enough to stay up, if that is the case then someone will have hit a really bad run of form.

"The target was 54 and it's still 54, if we can get that in the next two games then I will set them a new target.

"There's six games to go but I don't want to be saying that we need four points with two games to go and I spoke to the players yesterday and said much the same thing. I want us aiming for the points now, not thinking that there is plenty of games left, you can easily go on a run where you don't win for four games and then it really would be nervous times.

"I'm keen for us to keep the momentum going, we've done well since the turn of the year and obviously we've gathered a little bit more momentum since the beginning of March."

That momentum from March is something that the Gaffer feels has been coming for some time now but the raw facts can't hide that PNE are an improving side.

The Gaffer said: "I looked at a programme the other day from the Scunthorpe FA Cup game on the 5th of January, we'd played 26 games and we had 24 points, we've played 14 games since then and we've picked up 26 points so we've done really well.

"We've gathered a bit of momentum in March with the late run that we have had but it's been coming, but that just shows how much we had to do to get ourselves out of trouble, we've needed those points."

You can see exclusive interviews with Alan Irvine, Tamas Priskin and Chris Brown on Whites World over the course of the Easter Weekend.