A unhappy Preece said: "If this is the sign of things to come, then it's going to be a rubbish season."
"We lost out on Steve Macauley and its partly our fault because we dillied and dallied on it, but at the end of the day we could not compete with the contract that Rochdale have offered him. There was an opportunity where we could have got him signed up before Rochdale had even shown any interest and I am disappointed in it."
"Those two players (Macauley and Tom Bennet) you could see would have made a massive difference and that is the sort of quality that we are trying to bring in."