Peterborough United boss knows who and what to blame for the club’s weak possession stats!

In nine League One matches so far Posh have only had the greater share of possession on two occasions, against Fleetwood who were sitting on a two-goal lead from early on, and against Sunderland who only had nine men for the final 20 minutes.

Even big wins against Rochdale and MK Dons were accompanied by weak possession stats.

Ferguson is keen to see an improvement, but he is adamant there are convincing mitigating circumstances.

“Of course I would like to see an improvement in our possession numbers,” Ferguson admitted.

“They are not false stats, but they can be misleading.

“I want us to pass the ball through the lines, but I want us to do it quickly from back to front.

“Playing at that tempo rather than in a more cautious manner affects the possession stats.

“We also have Marcus Maddison in the side who will always go for the ambitious option. That is in no way a criticism because he is very good at it and I wouldn’t want him to stop trying things, but it does mean he will lose possession fairly regularly.

“The numbers are not what I want or what I expected, but we have scored 20 goals this season so we are not doing that badly.

“I want to set a team up to play fast, attacking, entertaining football. I don’t just want us to be seen as a counter-attacking team.

“We do need to control games better though. We didn’t do that anywhere near enough in our last two games.Even at 2-0 up at Tranmere we didn’t control the game and that was disappointing.”

Posh possession stats according to the BBC.

v Fleetwood (h) 74% (lost 1-3).

v Oxford (a) 45% (lost 0-1).

v Ipswich (h) 45% (drew 2-2).

v Southend (a) 37% (won 2-0)

v MK Dons (a) 47% (won 4-0).

v Sund’land (h) 52% (won 3-0).

v Rochdale (h) 36% (won 6-0).

v Tranmere (a) 47% (drew 2-2).