Peterborough United captain out for the season and manager explains his decisions before and during the game

Norburn was sent for a scan after limping off while playing for Grenada against Andorra on the European minnows’ plastic pitch in midweek.

The results came back today and McCann has confirmed that the Posh captain is in need of a complete ACL reconstruction.

McCann said: “Ollie is going to be out for a substantial period of time. He’s done his ACL, which is another huge kick in the teeth for us. It’s a nothing friendly game on a 4G pitch and for us to lose our captain is sickening for us and for Ollie.

“We’ll support him in any way we can to get him back as soon as possible.”

Posh were also without Mark Beevers and Ronnie Edwards this afternoon. Beevers was due to be in the line-up but was absent due to a family matter. Edwards contracted Covid while away on international duty with England Under 19s, but returned to the bench, while Emmanuel Fernandez made his debut for the club.

McCann revealed that there was never any intention of actually playing Edwards though, given his lack of preparation.

“Ronnie was never going to be involved today. He only came back in after testing negative today, he did a session on the grass. There was no intention of bringing him on, but I don’t like not to have seven on the bench and Ronnie was more than happy to do that.

“I like Manu’s attributes. He’s big, strong and quick, good in the air and he can handle the ball. He did well, although he will probably look back on the second goal and think he should have just cleared the ball.”

Young forward Ricky-Jade Jones did return though. He came off the bench to replace Jonson Clarke-Harris at half-time, a decision that left Posh struggling to hold the ball at the top end of the field and to get out in the second half. McCann has said that the decision was to try and get in behind Middlesbrough as they through men forward, but he was frustrated to see Posh concede a second after just four minutes of the half.

He said: “Hindsight is wonderful, but we felt at half-time that Ricky’s pace would hurt them but you don’t get any chance to put that plan in place when you concede so early in the second half. It was nothing against Jonson’s performance, I thought he did quite well but it was more to do with trying to get Ricky’s pace in behind.”