'Everybody was a 3/10' insists a disappointed Darren Ferguson after shock Carlisle defeat on Good Friday

Posh’s automatic promotion hopes were dealt a major blow on Good Friday with a shock 3-1 defeat at home against the team at the bottom of the table.

Posh fell victim to a Jon Mellish hat-trick, with the first coming just before half hour mark before Posh were punished twice more for failing to clear their lines after 49 and 58 minutes.

Posh had hope when Harrison Burrows saw an effort find the back of the net via a flick from Joel Randall, but despite late pressure, the hosts could not mount any more of a comeback.

Derby were 1-0 victors over Blackpool so Posh have now slipped back to 10 points behind second place, Bolton, however, were held to a 0-0 draw by Stevenage and Posh remain fourth as Barnsley were also surprisingly beaten at home by relegation threatened Cambridge.

Ferguson said: “I’m very disappointed. It’s a terrible result. We knew it would be a pivotal few days so this is very disappointing.

“As a collective, every single player has had an off-day and I include myself in that. You can get away with it if it’s two or three players, but we all got about three out of ten. If you do that, you are losing.

“We conceded three really soft goals - it could have been more - and the quality from our players in the final third, I haven’t seen it as bad at that this season. It’s irrelevant where teams are in the league, if you perform like that, you’re getting beat.

“We started the game okay, the tempo was good and we were getting the ball to our wide players and their right back got booked early in the game.

“If you look at the goals though, we’re well on top in the game, they take a short corner, we don’t stop the ball coming in and its a free header from six yards out.

“I’m not one for making changes too much at half time, I spoke to the players about what I wanted to see in the second hal,f but then the ball goes in the box and one of our centre halves says go on volley it in the net and he volleys it into the net.

“Third goal, header, go on put it in the net and he puts it into the net for 3-0 and we’re in real trouble.

"Could I have made the changes at half time? Perhaps, but I wanted to see how the second half started so first thing I’m going to look at is what I did leading up to the game. Did I give them too many days off after Portsmouth? Then I’ll start looking at the level of performance.

“The quality wasn’t there. We had a period when it went 3-1 and Jonno has a massive chance. You’ve seen him score so many of them. That’s what disappointed me.

“Some of them seem to have forgotten we’ve actually been promoted with Jonno in the team as a golden boot winner. We didn’t launch it, I don’t know what we were doing, we were just kicking it into the goalkeeper’s hands, you have to work it wide not smash it up front. That’s not how we play, I was disappointed with that, panic set in.

“It’s hard to control the game from the touchline like that so the players need to control it for themselves.

“I’m disappointed for the fans, it was a good atmosphere, good attendance and we’ve let them down and that’s the only time I’ve said that this season.

“I said a couple of weeks ago, we can’t afford any slip-ups and we’ve lost the last two.

“There is no need to press the panic button because we’ve lost before, but we’ve not seen anything as bad as today before. Generally we’re been very good this season. We’ve now got a mountain to climb to get into the top two.”

Posh must recover quickly before visiting Leyton Orient on Easter Monday. Orient’s play-off hopes suffered on Friday with a 1-0 defeat at Lincoln, leaving them six points outside of the top six.