The Peterborough Evening Telegraph
The boss and his players still believe
At the end of a remarkable few days, Posh boss Darren Ferguson insists his players proved they still believe promotion from League One is possible.
Posh followed a performance Ferguson described as ‘ill-disciplined, unprofessional and horrendous’ on Saturday with one full of superb attacking football on Tuesday.
And after the dust had settled on a 3-0 home capitulation to Cheltenham and a 5-2 romp at Burton Albion, Posh were eighth, six points off sixth, with a game in hand on Bolton Wanderers, the team currently occupying the final play-off spot.
"The performance at Burton didn’t surprise me,” Ferguson claimed. “I know what I’ve got and one really, really bad off-day in the 12 games since I’ve been back is not too bad.
"It’s important that we got a performance that showed we still thought we have a chance of getting into the play-offs and the players delivered.
"The words I used to describe the Cheltenham performance were all justified and the players responded with a display full of character and quality.
"The players showed they weren’t happy with their performance on Saturday. It’s okay a manager saying this, that or whatever, but the players showed they were embarrassed by Saturday and so they should have been.
“I had to come away from
Saturday and analyse all the games I’ve been in charge of and had to look at what we did well, not what we hadn’t done well.
"A performance that was that bad made it easier. There was no need to panic, but we just had to focus on what we do well and we certainly did that at Burton.
"Bad performances and results can happen and it’s how you react that becomes important and obviously I was pleased with how that went.
"Our counter-attack was outstanding. We’ve got quick players behind Jonson Clarke-Harris - who was excellent - and all four forwards scored, although our goalkeeper also made two or three very important saves at crucial times.
“The save at 0-0 was crucial as we didn’t start the game well.
"I have to credit all my players though. We played forward quicker on a difficult pitch and once we saw the opening part of the game out, the last 15 minutes of the first half and the start of the second-half were outstanding.
"Now we have to perform like that consistently.”
Clarke-Harris scored twice to take his League One goals tally to an impressive 21. He is now five goals clear in the race for the division’s ‘Golden Boot.’
Ephron Mason-Clark, Joe Ward and Harrison Burrows also netted to wipe away some of the pain from the Cheltenham debacle.
"I feared the worst during the warm-up (on Saturday),” Ferguson stated. “It was just awful and myself and ‘Jonno’ warned the players, but they took no notice.
"We were way off it from the start. I made two changes after 25 minutes and the mistake I made was not making them after 10 minutes.
"It was a prime example of a team playing however they wanted and going away from the gameplan completely, thinking they were just going to win.
"It was absolute nonsense.”