Jerry Yates ensured Derby left Deepdale with a share of the spoils as the Rams drew 1-1 with Preston in the Sky Bet Championship.

The 28-year-old took advantage of sloppy North End defending in the 29th minute to secure a fifth draw in seven Championship matches for Paul Warne’s men.

Sam Greenwood had opened the scoring with a delightful 23rd-minute header and, while Paul Heckingbottom will have been disappointed to drop more points from a winning position, the former Sheffield United boss has still only lost one league match at Deepdale since replacing Ryan Lowe in August.

With 10 minutes on the clock, Kaine Kesler-Hayden had the first real shot in anger as he let fly from distance but it was a fairly routine gather for Jacob Widell Zetterstrom.

It was a very scrappy opening but Greenwood provided the perfect antithesis to that with his fourth goal in six matches, latching on to a teasing Andrew Hughes cross before looping a header into the far corner from 15 yards.

But Derby bounced back just six minutes later with their first effort on target as Yates took advantage of Jack Whatmough’s miscued headed clearance to nod in his fourth goal of the season from point-blank range.

In the latter stages of the first half, Greenwood forced Zetterstrom into an acrobatic save with a fierce effort from the edge of the box and, at the other end, Ben Whiteman nearly prodded the ball into his own net after some ingenuity from Liam Thompson.

Milutin Osmajic had started on the bench after serving an eight-game ban for biting Blackburn’s Owen Beck but the Montenegrin came straight in for the start of the second half at the expense of Ryan Ledson.

And it was Preston who looked the more likely as both Kesler-Hayden and Emil Riis failed to get enough on a dangerous Brad Potts cross.

Riis made a much firmer connection in the 69th minute but, after a good turn in the centre of the park, his 30-yard thunderbolt was well wide of the mark.

Heckingbottom turned to the likes of Mads Frokjaer on his bench while Warne brought on the attacking experience of Nathaniel Mendez-Laing but the tone of the game never looked like changing.

Marcus Harness had an opportunity to snatch all three points right at the death but he lashed well over from 20 yards after Preston again failed to convincingly deal with a corner.

In the end, with a succession of misplaced passes, poor touches and a profound lack of quality on the whole, it was clear why both teams came into this on the back of just one win apiece in their last six league matches.