WONDER winger Eddie Lewis has been told to stay away from training for this week as Craig Brown looks to prevent burn-out in his star left-sided player.

The American international has been told to pretend he is a European international this week and stay away from Deepdale and the club's training ground at Springfields.

North End's next scheduled game, against Crewe on Saturday, has been cancelled because North End have several players away on international duty, including Scotland's Graham Alexander, Northern Ireland's David Healy and Polish youth international Pawel Abbott.

Brown said: "I've told Eddie to have the week off, because he played all summer for America and really hasn't had a break.

"But he is the sort of bloke who doesn't want to rest and will want to keep on training, but we'll have to over-rule this time.

"We don't want him to be jaded in February or March, when we really need him. He'll just have to pretend to be a European international this week."

And while February and March may be important months for North End, Brown believes September will show the rest of the division just what Preston are made of.

He said: "The chances we created on Saturday show the floodgates will open soon. We created enough chances to win three games.

"We are playing very well and in September, we will play a lot of the teams we played last season, teams we know, not teams who have been relegated and want to prove a point or ones which have come up and are living on rocket fuel."

But the second day of September brought bad news for Brown. Claude Davis, the newly signed Jamaican centre-back, who put in impressive performances against West Brom and Stoke before coming off injured in the second half against the Potteries side, will miss games against Bradford and Coventry City.

A knee ligament strain could keep him out until October, and Brown said: "It's a blow, because he looked OK.

"He'll definitely miss the next two games and could be out for four weeks."

Michael Keane, the other casualty on Saturday, should recover from a foot injury in time for the trip to Bradford a week on Saturday.