Peterborough United abandon plans to experiment against Stevenage so big guns all expected to play

Posh boss Darren Ferguson had suggested he might leave Toney out against the League Two strugglers as he is suspended from Saturday’s League One home clash with Burton Albion (November 23).

However any temptation to tinker with his starting line-up, and maybe try out a different formation, to provide a dress rehearsal for the Burton game appears to have been abandoned.

Posh will be without former Stevenage player George Boyd, whose knee problem will also keep him out of the weekend game, but Joe Ward has recovered from a foot injury and Josh Knight is available after missing the first Stevenage game because of illness.

“I’ve decided to take each game in isolation,” Ferguson stated. “I’m only thinking about tomorrow’s game. I will worry about the Burton match when tomorrow is over.

“I don’t really want to change our shape in home games. Our formation has worked well at home so even though Ivan can’t play on Saturday I will still want to play with two up top. One of Siriki Dembele, Idris Kanu or Ricky-Jade Jones will probably play.

“We want to reach the third round of the FA Cup so I will play my best team tomorrow. We need to take care of business against Stevenage and then we would have another home game to play to reach the third round so it’s a great opportunity for us.

“We dominated the first game at Stevenage, but didn’t have our normal quality in the final third. We have to improve that bit tomorrow, although I was pleased with the performance apart from that.

“We’ve been able to refresh mentally after having no game at the weekend so hopefully that will help us.

“Stevenage are going to have to make changes as they have players on international duty and they picked up three injuries in the first game, but they are sure to make things hard for us.”

Stevenage trio Noor Husin, Terence Vancouten and Luther James-Wildin are all away on international duty, although only Vancooten played in the first game against Posh. Kelland Watts, Dean Parrett and Kurtis Guthrie all picked up bad injuries in that match.