Alan Irvine was clearly disappointed after watching his side concede two late goals at Loftus Road, as he admitted that they deserved to take all the spoils from the 2-2 draw with QPR.

Preston may have reached the 54 point mark that the Gaffer set them back in January but there could have been an extra two on their tally had Gareth Ainsworth and Dexter Blackstock not struck with only a mater of minutes remaining.

At the post-match press conference, Irvine said: "We missed four good chances before we scored, I felt we should probably have had a penalty in the second half and we were good value for being 2-0 up.

"The players are obviously incredibly disappointed about what's happened but we move on. We'll approach the last four games in the way that we have been doing and hopefully we'll get some results before the end of the season.

"I didn't think that we lost our nerve, I think that quite simply QPR started to throw all things forward. Obviously they put Fitz Hall further up the park as everyone would do. You know you are going to have to stand up to a bit of an onslaught at the end and I didn't think that we were going to get carved open but the ball can always drop to someone.

"QPR had nothing to lose at the stage and clearly they were going to get the ball forward as soon as possible.

"I'm disappointed but we move on and the great thing is that the players are down there disappointed.  The players are devastated yet we've reached that figure that we have all been talking about."

With the score at 2-1, goalkeeper Lee Camp vacated his goal to join a late attack. North End broke and Tamas Priskin took the option of running the ball forward instead of playing a difficult cross-field pass to the galloping Sean St Ledger who had an open goal ahead of him.

When asked whether he felt the Hungarian made the right or wrong decision, Irvine revealed: "It's easy for us because we can see the whole picture but he was running with somebody chasing him at the same time. Obviously we can try to advise him to shoot at the point but it would have still been a difficult goal to score."

The Gaffer also explained that he hoped Neil Mellor's injury wasn't too serious after the striker was forced to withdraw from the match at half-time with a hamstring problem.

Irvine added: "His hamstring was very tight and we hope he has not pulled it. He made a run just before half time and it gave a little bit of a jerk so we got him in, had a look at it and it was clear that we would have been taking a big risk to put him back out there again. Quick players and hamstrings are not a good combination."