Big bid received for Peterborough United striker and poor late-season displays have caused a recruitment re-think

But Posh remain convinced the 23 year-old will become an attacking force in League One next season.

MacAnthony made the revelation on the latest episode of his ‘Hard Truth’ podcast. The chairman also hinted Posh could make close to 10 new signings in the summer after late-season performances by some fringe players caused a re-think to recruitment plans.

Posh won’t move away from their policy of signing young gems, but they will also try and sign players for the spine of the team who are ready to step into League One football straight away.

MacAnthony said: “I had a really good chat with the manager after the last game of the season and if some of the players had kidded us on, and we’d won those last few games, maybe that could have been the worst thing in the world for us. We could have sat back and said we only needed to sign three or four new players.

"Then a hard truth kicked in and we were concerned those players might have not turned up in August and September. Me and the manager were aligned on the need to sign 3 or 4 players, but now we are aligned on needing to do something much bigger than we expected. Things have evolved in the last couple of weeks. You have to run in games. if you can’t do that when there is nothing on the game for the club, but there is plenty on it for you, regardless of how talented you are, it’s a concern.

"We can’t be spooked by one awful season. We have to remember what we are as a club, but while we still have to sign young gems we will also add strong players to our spine.

"We will need one new goalkeeper, two centre-backs, a midfield partner for Archie Collins – who we well kidnap until he signs the new contract we’ve offered him – a number 10 to challenge Chris Conn-Clarke, who needs to be miles better, a replacement for Kwame and we need to get Gustav up and running. We know we have a player there and we received a seven-figure bid for him from a Swedish club.

"We will have 4 great full-backs. We have a great player in Cian Hayes and, as for Abraham Odoh, it’s up to him. He’s done okay in his first season with us but his challenge will now be to dominate games. We've almost signed the player who will challenge Odoh. Donay O’Brien-Brady did well in the last few games. Every player will have competition for his place next season though. There will be no guaranteed starters.

"I’ve already sat two potential new players down in front of the manager. By the time we go to St Georges Park on June 30 I expect four or five new players, all ready for the first team, will be with us. When we have created wage cap space by players leaving we will get the next four or 5 in. We will work them hard from day one as we want to be back in the top four or five in the league. We will spend money, we will be one of the big spenders again.

"All young players should still want to join us because they can get multi-million pound moves down the line, and because they could win cup finals at Wembley! But we will be signing players who want to be with us for two years because they want to win promotions and not just because they want that big money move.

"No-one is shying away from the recruitment last summer not working as we expected. Some of them haven’t been good enough and some haven’t developed as we expected, but, for instance, if you’d said a year ago Conn-Clarke and George Nevett would not work out for us I’d have bet big that you’d have been wrong. They were nailed on our type of players and they might yet still be. We felt Conn-Clarke would be a standout player for us and we always felt George would be more of a project.”

MacAnthony confirmed Posh are trying to sign centre-back Sam Hughes, but will go after another experienced defender if a deal can’t be done. Posh have a new box-to-box midfielder similar in stature and style to Hector Kyprianou lined up and the chairman remains convinced clubs chasing out of contract stars Kwame Poku and Ricky-Jade Jones will cut a deal with Posh rather than take a chance at compensation tribunals when set transfer fees have to paid in full as soon as the verdict is delivered.