The Peterborough Evening Telegraph
Posh are coming to the boil at just the right time
Darren Ferguson was delighted with a derby day win.
Posh manager Darren Ferguson believes his side are coming to the boil at just the right time.
Ferguson was delighted with the performance in a 2-0 derby win at Northampton Town last weekend, aresult that lifted Posh up to fifth.
Posh host slow-starting promotion fancies Oxford UnitedonSaturdayatthestart of a hectic period which includes matches on three successive Tuesdays.
“The League One table will start taking shape now,” Ferguson stated. “There are a lot of games coming in quick succession and whentheyare over it’s important we are still in a decent position.
“We are not at our best yet, but we are making progress. The only disappointment since the poor performance on the opening day of the seasonatAccringtonhasbeenthe first half against Swindon.
“We were very good in the first-half against Northampton. We changed our formation and the players carried out their instructions perfectly to cause them no end of problems. Thesecond-halfdid become scrappy, but we were comfortable, althoughIwould have liked to have scored the second goal earlier than we did.
“But at the end of the day it was a derby and winning was all that mattered. I’d have taken a scruffy, lucky win, but we throughly deserved the three points.”
Defender Nathan Thompson and midfielder Reece Brown scored the goals at Sixfields. It was a first Posh goal for bothplayers andalready 11 different players have scored for the first team this season in just eight competitive matches.
“I don’t care who scores as long as someone does,” Ferguson added. “It’s a good sign that goals have been spread out though. We might need to dothatnowwedon’thaveIvan Toney, but I thought Jonson Clarke-Harris was excellent withoutscoring at Northampton, especially in thelast quarter of the game when he held the ball up superbly for us.
“I n t he f ormation we played on Saturday, Jonson has a very similar role to the one Ivan played and he did it very well.
“It has also been encouraging to see Siriki Dembele playing well i n t wo different positions in the last two games. There were times when he was unplayable on Saturday, especially in the first-half in one-on-one situations. We didn’t get the ball tohimoftenenoughinthesecond-half, but hestill delivered some classy passes.
“We thought we would causethemplentyofproblems out wide and that’s what happened even though they manmarked Sammie Szmodics, something I hadn’t seen before.”