The Peterborough Evening Telegraph
The highs and lows of 2018
Peterborough United started 2018 eighth in League One with 38 points. They started 2019 fifth in League One with 44 points.
2018 was a year when Posh won more away games (12) than home matches (10) and when £2.5 million rated Marcus Maddison collected more than twice as many cautions (11) as goals (5) as he reached 200 appearances for the club.
For the second successive year Maddison made more appearances than any other play- er. He was the only man in an ever-changing squad to reach 50 appearances.
Posh sold a top striker in Jack Marriott for £4 million and replaced him with another top striker in Ivan Toney for £600k, but Barry Fry really showed his genius by getting almost £1 million out of Wigan for Leo Da Silva Lopes.
Posh were brilliant at Aston Villa (arguably the best performance of the entire year arrived early in January) and hopeless at home to Leicester City in successive rounds of the FA Cup and they sacked manager Grant McCann while on a four-game unbeaten run. Sadly they were all draws in a run of seven games without a win, the worst run of 2018.
Steve Evans, a man with a 100% record of winning promotion from League One, was appointed and, after overseeing the worst losing streak of the year, embarked on a summer signing spree which ended at 18 players. Most were Scottish.
Posh might have made limited progress on the field, but off it two co-owners from Canada arrived to help busy chairman Darragh MacAnthony and the ground moved closer to a return to club ownership, an obvious highlight of 2018, along with helping Northamton Town towards relegation with an Easter Monday victory at the ABAX.