Nathanael Ogbeta urges Peterborough United players and fans not to lose hope after Fleetwood defeat

Posh’s aspirations of extending their season were dented on Tuesday (February 14) when they made it back-to-back defeats with a 1-0 loss at Highbury despite dominating the ball for long periods.

Posh are now nine points adrift of the play-off places.

Posh were looking to bounce back from their record-equaling Football League defeat at home to Bolton on Saturday but made just one change, bringing in Swansea loanee Ogbeta in place of Dan Butler.

As it turned out, Ogbeta was one of Posh’s best performers with most of the side’s threat on the night coming from the left-back pushing forward.

He was, however, the man tasked with marking Promise Omochere as he headed in the game’s only goal after 20 minutes.

After the match, Ogbeta expressed his frustration, but agreed with manager Darren Ferguson’s assessment that Posh did many things right and put in a good performance apart from failing to score.

Ogbeta saId: “There was a lot of frustration in the dressing room. We did really well as a team in terms of performance, but the final moments killed us.

“I needed to do better for the goal, but we had chances to get back into it and we need to be more ruthless. The performance was really good though and we just need to keep building on it and not lose hope.

“Even though it is a disappointing result, we know if we keep playing like that, the wins will come, so we need to keep pushing

“The gaffer kept telling me to get high and it takes the pressure off Ephron. He has been amazing for us over the past couple of games so they targeted him and it gave me the licence to get forward and it worked really well.

“It was just final moments that needed better delivery from my end or better decision-making.

“Hopefully, as we keep improving and getting used to playing with each other, the goals and the assists will come.”

Ogbeta played 87 minutes before being replaced by Dan Butler in the closing stages with signs that he was starting to cramp up.

Prior to Tuesday’s game, he had not started a match since Swansea’s EFL Cup tie at Oxford on August 9 - his only Swans appearance this season – and had not started a league match since Shrewsbury’s 1-1 draw at Wimbledon on January 29, 2022.

Ogbeta added: “I’m grateful to the gaffer for giving me the opportunity. It’s been tough. I hadn’t started a league game in over a year and that’s been a real challenge, but I’m so grateful to get the belief from the manager to go out and play my game and to express myself.

“I just need to keep pushing. We’ve got lots of great lads in this team and hopefully going forward we can win games and have a really strong end to the season.”

Ogbeta should keep his place for Saturday’s League One trip to Morecambe.