The Peterborough Evening Telegraph
Posh are thriving in the heat of a battle
Posh are relishing the battle for the League One play-off places.
A six-point Easter with wins at Shrewsbury (3-0) and at home to Exeter (3-1) made it 16 points from the last six games for Darren Ferguson’s side.
That, and the stuttering form of others, has propelled Posh up to fifth place in the League One table, but the gap to nearest pursuers Bolton Wanderers and Derby County is just two points.
But Posh have their fate in their own hands with just five matches remaining and will take some shifting.
Manager Ferguson was naturally delighted with a pair of Bank Holiday wins, but his team received a warning against complacency with the second-half display against Exeter at the Weston Homes Stadium.
Posh were 2-0 up and cruising at the break, but came under heavy pressure after the visitors were gifted a goal at the start of the second-half.
"Overall it was another solid performance,” Ferguson insisted. “We are playing well and we are controlling games for long periods.
"We have a lot of confidence, but we must also do certain things better.
"One key from the Exeter game is to learn from our mistakes.
"I was fine at half-time, but within two minutes of the second-half I wasn’t!
"We didn’t do what we said
we were going to and we were punished straight away. That gave Exeter confidence and we came under pressure.
"It was a farcical goal to concede so the lesson is to manage games better when we are in the lead and we do that by not going away from a gameplan which is obviously working.
"Thankfully we claimed a third goal soon after changing formations to match them up and we saw the rest of the game out safely.
"Credit to the players though as they showed two sides to their game.
"We were very good in the first half, confident and dominant, although we probably needed to create more clearcut chances from the opportunities we had.
"And then we dug in and battled our way through a difficult patch. That’s a good skill to have because there will be difficult periods in the remaining games.
"We played like a team enjoying the challenge of a promotion battle at Shrewsbury.
"That was the most comfortable I’ve felt in a game up there in my career. We took control from the first minute and never really let up.
“It was a comfortable performance, full of belief. We were excellent, professional, mature and confident.
“I can’t pick too many faults in the performance, apart from we should have killed the game off in the first half, and we stopped passing the ball for a period when we went 2-0 up, but again we came through a tricky patch with few alarms.
"Shrewsbury had won their previous five home games so not many teams could have produced what we did.”
Posh conceded their first League One goal in over 400 minutes against Exeter.
The Posh play-off push was helped by Derby and Bolton failing to win at home against relegation candidates MK Dons and Cambridge United respectively on Easter Monday.
Both matches finished in 1-1 draws.