Preston North End have continued worrying trend with Ryan Ledson news - it has cost them millions | OneFootball

PNE's continued habit of letting players leave for free may cost them more than money before long

Preston North End have recently released their retained list following the end of the 2024/25 season, and some big names are set to depart the club.

The first name officially announced to be leaving Deepdale was midfield terrier Ryan Ledson, who has pulled on a Preston shirt 215 times across a seven-year stay in the North West.

Additionally, starting goalkeeper Freddie Woodman, who has kept 44 clean sheets from 138 competitive games for the club across three seasons, will leave in July, as will the Lilywhites’ top scorer in the league from two of the last four seasons, Emil Riis.

All these big names leaving the club will be doing so for no transfer fees to be used on possible replacements. Meanwhile, PNE confirmed their first summer arrival to the team, with Stoke midfielder Jordan Thompson putting pen to paper with the club.

He arrives having made a combined 245 appearances for the Potters and for Preston’s biggest rivals Blackpool, and could very well serve as a Ledson replacement. He will join on a free, and it is all-but a done deal that former loanee goalkeeper Daniel Iversen will do the same very soon, according to sources close to Football League World.

Whilst it’s refreshing to see PNE dipping into the transfer market to fill gaps so quickly, there has been no money spent yet by the club to secure any new signatures.

PNE have missed previous chances to cash in on departing players

Preston are often described as a club with one of the lowest overall financial totals in the Championship. Commonly, that is reflected in their squad wage bill. As reported by FLW earlier this season, PNE placed 15th of 24 in a ranking of all second-tier clubs’ wage bills across the 2024/25 season.

There was a memorable open letter penned by the club’s owner, Craig Hemmings, in 2022. In it, he outlined PNE’s annual incomings and outgoings, financially speaking, saying it "leaves my family with an annual shortfall of around £12m which we have to put into the club each season".

It was floated by the LEP in February that Ledson should have been offered a new contract after captaining Preston to a win against Norwich City – a match during which he was hailed by assistant manager Stuart McCall. However, surprisingly, there was no progress on that front from that point onwards.

Since his departure was made official before anyone else’s, he has been subject to interest from a wide variety of other clubs. Both Oxford United and Bolton Wanderers are closely monitoring the midfielder. Huddersfield Town are said to be in talks over a deal too.

Oxford secured safety in the second tier in 2024/25 before Preston did, so for Paul Heckingbottom to lose a reliable player to Championship competitors for nothing would sting. Similarly, Bolton are geographically near to Preston, and to see a player leave for free to join close rivals might leave a bit of a sour taste in the mouth. Those talks with Huddersfield are probably the least offensive route.

Preston have missed out on millions in recent transfer windows

These releases come exactly one year removed from the departure of former captain Alan Browne. The Irishman was part of the furniture at PNE for years, making 414 appearances in all competitions and making 72 goal contributions in that time.

At the age of 29, with years still left to play, he departed Deepdale for free. This was allowed to happen, even though, just six months earlier, Browne was a subject of interest to Italian side Salernitana, per Gianluca Di Marzio of Sky Italia.

Despite talks between the two clubs about a transfer in that January window, which would’ve incurred a cost, nothing came of this – less than a year later, and PNE lost their skipper to Championship rivals Sunderland for nothing.

In an eerily similar fashion, long-time midfielder Daniel Johnson left PNE in 2023 upon the expiry of his contract. He was an exemplary servant to the Lilywhites, making 336 appearances and bagging 93 goal contributions during his eight-and-a-half-year stint with the club.

Despite heavy interest from Rangers (who appear to take a keen interest in PNE’s top stars) in 2020, several bids for the Jamaican were rejected by then-manager Alex Neil. George Hodgson, of LancsLive, called the Scottish side’s highest bid of £2m “insulting”.

Given how crucial “DJ” was to the squad back then, that is a completely fair opinion to have. But according to the LEP, Preston have only ever exceeded £2m twice before with their imports, so it’s very reasonable to suggest that some shrewd business could’ve been done with that Johnson money. After all, per Deepdale Digest, Johnson himself only cost the club £50k when he joined from Aston Villa in January 2015.

Preston’s lack of spending power may do serious harm to ambitions

The priority for PNE going into 2025/26 will be to improve on last season's underwhelming league position of 20th. The highlight of their campaign last time out was a memorable FA Cup run, making the quarter-final for the first time in 60 years, and that will do them some good from a financial standpoint.

However, those extra spends are barely a drop in the water when compared to the teams around them in the second tier. Preston’s reported income from their progress in English football’s oldest competition last season was a combined £460k, per the FA’s prize fund listings.

When you compare that to what clubs who have been relegated from the Premier League over the course of the past three years will have at their disposal, there is no comparison. This was outlined by EFL Chairman Rick Parry and reported by Stoke-on-Trent Live in March.

Parry said: “Parachute clubs’ year one payments is very nearly £50m, other Championship clubs get 11 percent of that. They get just over £5m. You can’t say that 'the EFL get X' because it depends on how many parachute clubs there are. It could be between four and nine, which is a pretty barmy system in itself.”

In the 2025/26 Championship season, Preston will be one of just five or six teams that have never played Premier League football, subject to the outcome of the League One play-off final. Additionally, one of those five or six sides is Wrexham, who are financially backed by two very well-known actors in Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds.

If Preston