Chairman insists only Darren Ferguson could have turned an 'unwatchable' Peterborough United performance into a winning one
Posh chairman Darragh MacAnthony insists only Darren Ferguson could have turned an ‘unwatchable’ performance into a winning one at Burton Albion.
Posh won 1-0 at the Pirelli Stadium last weekend despite a dire first-half display which had alarm bells ringing on the pitch, in the dressing room and on the away terrace.
MacAnthony admitted the fans had a right to air their grievances in public, but he praised Ferguson for his part in dampening a toxic atmosphere in the second-half.
Ferguson showed his irritation with the performance after the game when insisting his players failed to implement any part of a plan that been put together in a two-week period without a match. It was widely thought Ferguson’s job would have come under immense pressure had Posh lost at Burton.
"Me and the manager expected fireworks,” MacAnthony said on the latest edition of his ‘Hard Truth’ podcast. “I speak to him every couple of days and I knew exactly what he’d been working on from the patterns of play to how we would attack that game and none of it happened.
"That first-half would have felt like he’d been wounded by a sniper. He wouldn’t have wanted that performance to have been delivered under his name. I know he had worked his nuts off for a fortnight. He didn’t rest, but he was let down. Fans have every right to moan and to criticise and the manager could hear them. I couldn’t on my feed because all I could hear was the manager.
"But only he could have turned that game around. Only he could have got into those players and got them to win. I don’t know what he said at half-time – maybe he took a machine gun out – but the first 15 minutes of the second half was the best we played all game, and we have usually been poor in the minutes straight after half-time. We weren’t great, but we did enough to win. I wanted that win for the manager because he deserved some output from his input.
"I jokingly said to the gaffer afterwards maybe he should just ditch tactics and tell the players to come in and run 10km every day and see how much they enjoy coming into work then.
"It’s now up to the greatest manager in our history to figure it all out. He won’t have been tested like this in his career and I will be his biggest fan when he turns it around. I will be delighted for him. When he looks back on his ups and downs he can look back on a really tough period and be proud he came through it.”