Preston North End Chairman Derek Shaw is continuing to encourage more and more supporters to back Alan Irvine's side for the forthcoming season.

The Club has been busy contacting all season ticket holders from the 2007/08 campaign who have so far opted against renewing for the forthcoming season, to encourage them to renew or understand their reasons not to.

Shaw believes that it would be a tremendous boost if North End could reach a record amount of sales, however he fully understands the motives behind why a minority of fans have still to commit for the new season, which kick-offs in just over seven weeks time.

Speaking to PNE.Com, North End's Chairman explained: "We've written to those fans this week. We are up in numbers, but I was a little bit surprised at the amount of people who haven't renewed but on the flipside of that we have sold many more season tickets than we did at this stage last year.

"Also we do know that there are many fans that have committed to a season ticket for the coming campaign that have not bought one in the last few years which is very encouraging. So if those who haven't yet renewed from last season do so then we would have a real record on our hands and that would be a huge boost for everyone connected to the Club.

"But we understand that circumstances change, the cost of living has gone through the roof recently and unfortunately sometimes people have to look at the areas where they want to treat themselves and might have to cut-back on their treats. People have to pay their bills and I thoroughly understand that."

The North End Supremo also defended the cost of season tickets at Deepdale, stating a number of reasons behind the Club's pricing policy for the 2008/09 campaign.

Shaw added: "We've received much criticism that there are Premiership clubs with cheaper season tickets than ourselves but we are not subsidised by a £50m cheque from the Premier League. A lot of these clubs, their season ticket and gate revenue is one of their more minor revenue streams, the big money comes from TV money. Thousands of people have said to me, why don't we do what Bradford City or Huddersfield Town did?

"These scenarios were closely looked into but the reason we haven't drastically reduced our season ticket prices is that our wage bill is in the region of £8m a year and if we offered a ridiculously cheap season ticket then we would have to sell thousands and thousands just to cover what we take now. We have probably taken about £2m on season ticket money so far and when we are paying out £8m on wages and trying to build a squad to get us out of the division you don't have to be a genius to work out how many months the season ticket money actually covers, it just about covers the summer months.

"I get accused of going on about the money, but I'm just trying to tell people the facts of how challenging it can be to try and run the Football Club.

"The report showed that we were very high in the percentage of wages compared to the cash that comes in. The Club doesn't hide anything because it all goes into the accounts every 12 months, we are very open. There are some things within the Football Club that you have to keep private but the cash side of it is always in our accounts for anybody to see."