Peterborough United don't know what to expect from Blackpool, but there won't ever be a repeat of their own most recent performance
Peterborough United manager Darren Ferguson is confident there will not be a repeat of last weekend’s performance against Burton Albion again this season.
Ferguson's anger at the first 45 minutes of what turned out to be a 1-0 League One win at the Pirelli Stadium was played out in public after the game.
His opinions haven’t changed three days later, but he did find some positives to reflect on in the squad’s weekly debrief on Monday. Straight after that meeting attention switched to another big basement battle when rock-bottom Blackpool come to the Weston Homes Stadium on Saturday to play the team directly above them.
That game has become a little bit more difficult in terms of planning as Blackpool appointed former Bolton Wanderers boss Ian Evatt as their new manager on Tuesday.
But Posh see the visit of ‘The Seasiders’ as the start of a great opportunity to finally clamber out of the relegation zone. Four of the next five League One games for Posh are at home. After Blackpool, Posh also host AFC Wimbledon (November 8), Stockport County (November 20) and Stevenage (November 25). Posh are at Mansfield on November 15, but that game could be postponed because of international call-ups.
“We have to take advantage of these games,” Ferguson said. “We have to get on a winning run and get out of the bottom four. Then we can start looking further up the table.
"Obviously if we repeat the first half at Burton we won’t be going anywhere, but I can’t see that standard of performance coming again. It was a lively dressing room at half-time as we had looked dysfunctional which I just couldn’t understand. There was no discussion to be had about the performance. Usually you can find something to disagree about, but in this case there wasn’t.
"We went through it all again on Monday. We have played better than that this season and lost, but there were some positives. We kept a clean sheet, the goalkeeper was very good and we defended our box well against the long throws, which we haven’t always done this season.
"We move on now. We have another important game and we now don’t know what to expect from Blackpool because they have a new manager. They’ve been playing with a back four, but the new manager has played with a back three for most of his career.
"We will be ready for anything though. As always we need to take care of our own game first and foremost.”
Posh will have to make one enforced change as experienced central defender Tom Lees will be serving his one-match suspension following his red card at Burton with Ireland Under 21 international David Okagbue his most likely replacement, unless the there is a change of formation.
Posh have played with three central defenders and wing-backs in all their recent games.
"The formation is not set in stone,” Ferguson added. “No formation ever is. We made a couple of changes to the way we set up during the game last week because Burton played slightly differently to what they had been doing.”