Nottingham Forest 1-0 Preston: Dougie Freedman and Simon Grayson reaction

Nelson Oliveira's ninth goal of the season halted a run of four straight defeats for Nottingham Forest as they saw off Preston 1-0 to bring a smile back to boss Dougie Freedman's face.

The on-loan Benfica striker settled a tight encounter eight minutes from the break, finishing off a three-man counter-attack to secure the spoils, although it took a brilliant late save from Dorus De Vries to protect the result.

"I am very pleased - I thought we deserved to win," said Freedman. "We could have scored a few more, we created a few chances, although it was a bit nervy towards the end and credit to Preston for that.

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"I thought we threatened their goal all night from start to finish, but we had to make sure we got the win after four defeats and we did that."

The Scot highlighted the contributions of match-winner Oliveira and Ryan Mendes, adding: "We had enough opportunities, but we didn't quite make the right decisions at the right times, although Ryan Mendes and Nelson Oliveira were right on top of their game.

"We have got to be patient with Nelson - he is a wonderful footballer. He is a good goal threat and he took his goal well and ran well off the ball tonight."

Preston manager Simon Grayson was not too downhearted with the defeat and thought his team would have had something from the match if it were not for De Vries.

"There wasn't much in the first half, I thought we look quite comfortable and they didn't threaten us too often," said Grayson. "We were unfortunate for the goal - they broke quickly on the counter and before you know it the ball's in the net.

"We changed it at half-time to give us a bit of a threat going forward because we have to try and win games at this stage of the season. We were a bit ragged for the first 10 minutes, but in the end their goalkeeper's been the man-of-the-match and that speaks a lot about our performance tonight."