Peterborough United chairman on a £500k transfer fee, the unusual contract of his manager and the possible playing stars of the 2025-26 season
You could never accuse Peterborough United chairman Darragh MacAnthony of hiding.
Some Posh fans are still angry about last season and many others are fretting about the 2025-26 campaign as they see another very young squad being assembled for the hurly burly of League One football.
But MacAnthony oozes calm confidence. He usually does on his own ‘Hard Truth’ podcast, he did in his annual lengthy interview, some would say monologue, with his club’s media team at St George’s Park earlier this month and he gave up almost two hours of his time to the ‘UpthePoshCast’ podcast team on Friday night when he was again in top form.
I defy anyone panicking about the immediate Posh future at the start of the conversation to be anything other than relaxed by the end of it. Well slightly more relaxed at least.
‘UpThePoshCast’ is a relatively recent addition to the Posh social media landscape. A rotating list of seven hosts chat Posh among themselves usually, but they have also proven adept at landing the big guests. It’s only been going for around a year, but they’ve had MacAnthony on twice (one more than the club's in-house podcast) as well as Posh playing legend Craig Mackail-Smith.
Crew members can be verbally aggressive in the heat of post-match moments on social media, and at games, but they nodded along happily when face-to-face with the chairman in his latest interview. Letting MacAnthony speak is always the best approach and he threw out tasty morsels even if a lot of it parroted his recent club interview.
**Posh apparently spent half-a-million on new midfielder Brandon Khela (pronounced Kell-er by the way) and MacAnthony didn’t want to big him up too much, while also hinting he could be a cross between Hector Kyprianou and Jack Taylor.
**Posh boss Darren Ferguson has a ‘zero-zero’ contract. He can leave for another club without Posh receiving compensation and he can be sacked without receiving any compensation. Ferguson’ existing deal expires at the end of the forthcoming season.
**The new player leadership group suggested bonus payments if the team went 15 games unbeaten or won 6-7 games in a row. MacAnthony liked an approach which would have cost him zero pounds last season.
**MacAnthony is 70-30 certain Archie Collins won’t sign a new Posh contract, but he’s more confident that Harley Mills will.
MacAnthony’s apparent belief Donay O’Brien-Brady is turning into Michel Platini is harder to accept just now as is his conviction there is already plenty of goals to be found in the current playing squad.
But then as the man himself said regarding the transfer of Emmanuel Fernandez to Rangers: “When Manny turned down Norwich City in January me and Barry Fry were tearing our hair out believing we would never get a bid like that again. Instead he’s now gone to a club who could be playing in the Champions League next season and we’ve received more money that Norwich would have paid, so what do we know?!”
MacAnthony also has a new catchphrase as we were told ‘not to sleep on’ O’Brien-Brady or Academy graduate Eddie Fox. I think that means he fancies their chances of going well next season.