The Peterborough Evening Telegraph
Sloppy start and a very late miss cost Posh the match
The chance to pinch a point arrived late for Posh.
A superb 95th minute long pass from substitute Sammie Szmodics found Jonson Clarke-Harris beyond the Preston defence.
If the big man could control the ball and lay it square Jack Marriott had a tap in. Instead the centre forward went for goal with a stabbed volley which carried a high degree of difficulty and home goalkeeper Daniel Iversen made the save. There wasn’t even time to take what would have been Posh’s first corner of the match.
That stat and the fact Iversen was making his first save of the game was proof that a draw would have represented daylight robbery.
Preston started the day bottom of the Championship without a point to their name. Ripe for the plucking you’d think then if Posh could replicate the levels of their previous outing against Cardiff,
Sadly, Posh started so slowly and so sloppily the
hosts received all the encouragement they required to start to turn their season around.
Preston struck early as Posh frailties from set pieces surfaced in the 14th minute with centre-half Patrick Bauer powering home a close range header from Ryan Ledson’s free kick.
Ben Whiteman struck the bar from the edge of the area and Posh goalkeeper Christy Pym, who might well have left his line to try and prevent the goal, saved well after one straight pass enabled Scott Sinclair to burst through.
Posh didn’t register a shot on goal until the 40th minute (a wild slash from centre-back Frankie Kent), but somehow they survived
until the break.
They were better in the second-half (it would have been hard to be worse), but Siriki Dembele missed a selfcreated golden opportunity to equalise in the 51st minute. His brilliant dribble left two defenders and a goalkeeper on their backsides, but his subsequent shot from close range was too weak to beat Sepp Van Den Berg on the goalline.
Posh huffed and puffed without creating much, while Pym made a couple of decent saves as Preston threatened on the break.
‘Very disappointing,” said Posh boss Darren Ferguson after the game. He was probably using stronger language in his head.
A point would have constituted daylight robbery.