HAIRDRYER DAZ
Fergie Jnr’s dressing down is the spur for Posh
DARREN FERGUSON gave his Peterborough players a halftime hairdryer that bolstered their play-off push, while denting Derby’s own ambitions.
The Rams were dominant in the first half and victory for Paul Warne’s men looked an inevitability at the break.
But Ferguson (right) changed formation on the half-hour – and then his side came out different altogether after the interval.
Posh were quick to respond to their manager’s rollicking as goals from Ephron Mason-clark and Nathanael Ogbeta moved them to within a point of Derby, who sit one place above them in sixth.
Ferguson said: “I had some choice words to say to them at half-time because it was a nightand-day performance. All the things we’d worked on in the week, we never did.
“But you can get that. I just said, ‘We have to turn up, guys. We have to play how we want to play’.
“They were so comfortable I didn’t like it.
“We changed things tactically and had a bit more balance in the team.
“The biggest thing I said to them is, ‘Look, if you carry on playing like that you’re going to regret it for the rest of your careers possibly because this is such a big game’, and we didn’t turn up. It’s a slightly different victory, it has kept that momentum.” Derby had more snap about them in virtually every department in a one-sided first half, although they didn’t create too many clearcut chances. After the break it was an altogether different story, with Peterborough threatening more in five minutes than they had in the entire first half. They took the lead when Masonclark drilled his side ahead with a fierce shot past Joe Wildsmith. Ogbeta’s strike soon after was equally well caught and needed a decent save from Wildsmith, and the Rams stopper had to be brave to deny Jonson Clarke-harris.
Tom Barkhuizen went close with a header for Derby that he should have scored. And the Rams were made to pay soon after when Ogbeta prodded home.
Derby boss Paul Warne said: “We’ve had a real good week and our performance levels were significantly better. But we didn’t have enough in the final third and didn’t create enough chances when we were on top.
“That was what disappointing. We said at half-time they’d come at us and when they did we didn’t defend resolutely enough.
“We played with such an intensity in the first half, in the second half they stepped it up a bit and we couldn’t hang on.”