MATCH REACTION: McCann plans a purge of the mediocre

McCann was hurt by his side’s tame surrender in their final League One match at Bolton today (April 30). Bolton won 3-0 to secure their automatic promotion back to the Championship.

Posh finished 11th, but that didn’t satisfy their rookie, but very ambitious, boss.

“I should be happy with 11th place in my first season as manager, but I’m not,” McCann stated. “Mediocrity doesn’t sit well with me and I’ve told the players that many of them will be moved on.

“There will be plenty going onto the transfer list and it will be in their best interests to leave the club. They need to get their agents working for them because if they are still with me they won’t be training with the rest of the squad and they won’t be coming to Spain in pre-season with us.

“I didn’t have the characters and leaders in the squad I thought I had, but I will next year.

“It summed it up for me in February when we were four points off the play-offs going into games at Bradford and Millwall and I asked the squad how many of them thought we had a chance of promotion.

“Only about 40% of them put their hands up and that told me a lot. I’m a born winner and I want players with the same attitude.

“We were poor today. Bolton are a big strong physical side and they overpowered us in the second half. It was very disappointing.

“It’s okay saying we had nothing to play for, but it’s a game of football and we should have wanted to win it. Instead we showed no hunger and no desire.

“It was a big game, a big stage and a big audience and yet we didn’t compete. We didn’t win any first balls and we didn’t win any second balls.

“Tom Nichols should have scored in the first half when he went through and didn’t get a shot away, but that was about it for us.

“I will say Lewis Freestone was excellent. He was up against one of the best players in the division (Filipe Morais) and he stopped him getting his dangerous crosses into the area.”

McCann will inform his players over the next two days who he wants to stay and who he wants to leave,

McCann revealed Posh have tied up one new signing who will be unveiled in the next few days. Posh are known to have held transfer talks with Dover striker Ricky Miller who scored 40 goals for the National League side this season.