The Peterborough Evening Telegraph
Should Fergie stay or should he go?
It’s quite the dilemma facing Posh chairman Darragh MacAnthony and current firstteam boss Darren Ferguson
Come the end of the season, do they stick together and continue their 16-year on-off bromance?
Or will they part company for a fourth time leaving MacAnthony with a frantic hunt for a sucessor?
If Ferguson wants to stay he probably will and I have no reason to disbelieve him when he says talks won’t start until the current campaign is over.
Weirdly the more success Ferguson delivers this season the less I’d favour his continued presence at the Weston Homes Stadium. It hasn’t worked for him at Championship level with better Posh squads than the current one.
But if the season ends in disappointment there’s no other manager I’d want at London Road to oversee a League One promotion push in the 2023-24 season.
I had my reservations when he returned to the club for a fourth stint as manager in January. Why would players take too much notice of a man not committed to the club beyond the next four months?
But Ferguson at Peterborough United does work and it has again regardless of what happens this weekend. Posh have picked up 39 points from 21 games under the five
time promotion-winner and if that points per game return had started a month earlier a play-off spot would already have been guaranteed.
Okay a thin squad appears to have hit the wall in recent weeks, but for this set of players to still have a chance of promotion with a game to go is a decent achievement given the standard and status of the six teams currently above them.
I don’t expect Posh to go up. If they did then I’d be surprised if Ferguson even wanted
to stay.
His obvious affection for the club aside, I’m not sure he’d relish the strain of battling against the odds to try and keep Posh in the Championship, especially as the likes of Jack Taylor and Ronnie Edwards, two players who could make the step up comfortably, could well leave London Road this summer, no matter what happens in the next month.
Ferguson quit in February the last time he managed Posh in the second tier just
two years ago as he realised he wasn’t the man for the job.
IfPoshdogoupthatwould be the time to look for a fresh face, one with new ideas, one who could think outside the box to take bigger, stronger clubs by surprise.
If Posh stay where they are, there is no need to take a risk on a rookie boss when they have a proven winner in situ, one who won promotion from League One just two seasons ago.
Players will come and go this summer, but those arriving are likely to be from lower down the football food chain.
There is no problem with that given the Posh record of recruitment from nonleague football, and who was it who helped turn Craig Mackail-Smith, George Boyd and Aaron Mclean into Premier League players?
Darren Ferguson of course. He ticks an important Posh box of believing and trusting in younger players, while also delivering results, as long as the club is in League One.