Peterborough United boss admits his side lack quality with players repeating the mistakes of last season

Posh finished the last campaign in 18th place and have kicked off the new season with consecutive defeats - albeit against newly relegated Championship sides Cardiff City and Luton Town. The latter won 2-0 at the Weston Homes Stadium on Saturday, a defeat that left Posh as one of six teams without a point after two games – the others are Mansfield Town, Wycombe Wanderers, Blackpool, Plymouth Argyle and Reading

Posh battled well in the first half against ‘The Hatters’ without creating any real chances before collapsing in the second half to concede two poor goals – a set-piece headed home by centre-back Mads Andersen and a horrible back pass and mix up between George Nevett and Nicholas Bilokapic which led to a Jordan Clark tap-in.

Ferguson, who has stuck with a number of sub-par performers from last season, admitted after the match that his side are repeating mistakes they were making last season and that this cannot continue.

He also spoke of a lack of quality in the squad which his coaching staff must seek to address in time.

Ferguson said: “We give goals away that I have seen too many times. I am seeing too many similarities to last season. It is my job to do something about that. The quality is not there at the moment. You’d hope it improves. The way we play hasn’t changed

“We’ve lost Kwame Poku and we’ve recruited a right winger, we’ve recruited a left winger to challenge Abraham Odoh, but the ones that have had a season with us now need to progress and improve. The ones that have just come in, it’s slightly different for them.

"I’m not panicking because we are only two games into a season, but our wide players need to produce and if they don’t I have to look at doing something different, whether we have recruited for that or not. We’re nowhere near that point yet though.

“They are having a go though but the quality is just not there. We can’t keep saying ‘when we had this player or that player.’ We are not going to have a player of Poku or Ephron Mason-Clark’s quality. The new lads are not anywhere near that level at the moment, but we need to keep working with them to get them to that level. We were privileged to have those players.

“Some of the players are better than what they showed and I have to take the positives. I did like the look of the midfield. We’ve got Klaidi Lolos close and in the first half, we dealt with them well and we were good. Anyone at the game would be thinking that was a much better performance and now I need to find out why we are starting second halves poorly.

“I was pleased first half. We were the better team. We got a lot more control in possession than we did last week. We got our wide players into some very good positions and our three midfielders were very good, but you win and lose games in both boxes. Going forward, we did not have enough quality and then we conceded poor, poor goals.

“In the second half, we started poorly again. We gave the ball away too much, they got a bit of momentum and we couldn’t get any control of the game after that.

“They are very poor goals to concede, For the first one, one of our men loses one of theirs and it’s a free header. That let them get on top. With the second, the the weight of the pass was a problem and the ball was played to Nick’s weaker foot, but then he should just boot it into the stand. I’ve never seen a goal scored from the stand.”

Posh travel to face Accrington Stanley in the Carabao Cup first round on Tuesday night (August 12) where a much-changed team is expected to be fielded and then return to League One action at Wigan Athletic on Saturday (August 16).