Beaten Exeter City boss says Peterborough United are the 'best team in League One'

The Grecians beat Posh at St James Park last month and at times threatened to upset Darren Ferguson’s side again today before succumbing to goals from Ephron Mason-Clark and Kwame Poku.

Caldwell was obviously disappointed with the result, but not with the performance of his side.

“Peterborough are the best team in the league for me in terms of quality and the way they play,” Caldwell said. “They’ve got good players and some are better than this league, so they give you so many problems, but for large parts we matched that and kept going right to the very end.”

“The result is a big disappointment, but I have massive pride in our performance and the way we went about it. We gave a bad first goal away from the first time Peterborough had really got into our half.

“That can be a real blow for the players mentally, but they kept doing the things we asked of them and got back into the game. I felt we were the better team in the first half. Our press was outstanding and we were really aggressive without the ball.

“We changed what we did in the first game at our place when we were a little bit passive. If we had done that here, it would have just been a case of waiting to be beaten.

“The second half was a case of two teams going out to win the game, but we had a 10-minute spell where we gave the ball away cheaply after winning it.

“We were just kicking the ball away and inviting more pressure rather than trying to pass out of trouble and Peterborough scored the winning goal in that period.

“I thought we dominated later in the game and could have got something from it at the end. The bravery we showed in and out of possession was excellent.”

Exeter are 15th in League One, six points above the relegation zone.