Peterborough United boss berates the officials, lauds his goalkeeper and the determination and desire of his defenders, but he felt a lack of quality was costly

The excellence of goalkeeper Nicholas Bilokapic almost secured a first clean sheet of the season for Posh until the hosts were awarded a 98th minute penalty kick. Ferguson didn’t question that decision, but he was angry with a failure to rule out a goal, that was scored after Bilokapic had saved the spot-kick, for what he claimed was a handball. He insisted the assistant referee lost the plot with his positioning.

Posh have dropped a place to 13th. They are at Newport County for a first round FA Cup tie next Saturday before hosting in-form Cambridge United in a League One derby on November 9. Sam Curtis will be suspended from that game after collecting his fifth caution of the season today.

"Football can be a very cruel game,” Ferguson admitted. “And the way we lost this game was proof of that, but the standard and quality of officials is what us managers and players are up against. Nick has made a great save from the penalty and when he does that the assistant referee has charged up the touchline when he had to stay on the goalline to see if there is an infringement. I’ve seen it back and it’s a handball. The assessor is aware of what the assistant did and I couldn’t believe what I was watching.

"Add to that the timekeeping. We were told he was playing six minutes 30 seconds and they took the corner that led to the penalty at 7.02. The penalty was going to be the last kick of the game and he let them have three goes at it.

“The players are down, but I’ve told them if they show that level of desire and determination to keep the ball out the net on a regular basis we will be fine. Bolton are a good team. They will be top six for sure with the amount of money they have spent and the number of good players they have. There are times in games, especially away from home, when we won’t be so good on the ball and we have to dig in and we did that. The two centre-backs and midfielders were very good and Nick was outstanding. We’ve had the clean sheet taken away from us by the referee.

“I hope the fans who were quick to criticise him when he made mistakes now give him the compliments he deserved. Part of the reason why he was left out was for the criticism he receive. I was disappointed with how many saves he had to make, but then our quality on the ball wasn’t good enough and we had to do too much defending, We didn’t reach the levels we showed last time out. The toughest thing for players is consistency and we have struggled with that. We’ve lost six of our first 14 games now and that’s too many, but we can now analyse what’s been going on and have a re-set.

"T|he first-half was even. They started and finished it better, but we had the middle bit, but we didn’t make the most of the possession we had. They were better than us in the second-half when we had just the one spell when their goalkeeper made an unbelievable save. My players gave everything though. If we had shown some quality at the top end we could have come away with something.”