Peterborough United in 2021: How Jimmy Bullard helped the Posh promotion push, a £250k signing on fee for a 16 year-old, unlikely heroes, quality quotes, one slogan that paid off and another that might come back to haunt the chairman!

Here’s my A to Z of the last 12 months...

A is for a first AUTOMATIC promotion for 12 years which was quickly followed by a run of results AWAY from home which is threatening an unwanted club record low of just 10 points from the 1993-94 season.

B is for BUSBY, John, without whom promotion might never have been achieved. Busby was the referee who made one of the worst penalty decisions of all time in the 95th minute of the final home game against Lincoln City to give Posh the point they needed to secure second place. Busby joins fellow referee Jonathan Moss (play-off semi-final at MK Dons in 2011) as an unlikely Posh hero. Meanwhile former Posh star Jimmy BULLARD was credited with re-igniting the scoring form of Sammie Szmodics after the pair had a chat. I wonder if Bullard is available for another conversation?

C is for 33-goal Jonson CLARKE-HARRIS and his nerves of steel from the penalty spot, and COMEBACKS of which there were plenty (Ipswich, Charlton, Wigan, Derby, QPR and Millwall were all beaten at London Road after taking the lead), but most notably from 3-0 down at home to Lincoln City in that promotion-clinching game to the CHAMPIONSHIP.

D is for DEMBELE, Siriki who rocked the club by asking for a transfer back in January amid reports of interest from Fulham. “They’ve watched him 20 times,” Posh director of football Barry Fry said. “I’m thinking of charging them for a season ticket.” Almost 12 months later and Dembele is still at Posh, but there is a transfer window looming...

E is for the ‘best young player’ Posh boss Darren Ferguson has ever managed Ronnie EDWARDS who earned ENGLAND recognition in 2021. Posh chairman Darragh MacAnthony has christened Edwards ‘New Stadium’ as he believes his transfer would cover the cost of the planned new ground on the EMBANKMENT, although Edwards could be 40 by the time building permission is finally given. Former Posh playing star Matthew ETHERINGTON was promoted from under 23 coach (a position he’d only taken on in the summer) to first-team coach when personal issues forced Mark Robson to take a job at West Ham United.

F is for the Posh FANS who were cruelly denied access to a promotion season by numpty politicians and other harbingers of doom. They were badly missed, partly because they would have drowned out the FOUL language directed at referees and their assistants from technical areas and on the field. I started feeling sorry for our officials having to deal with that level of abuse and that’s a feeling I never though I’d experience. Darren Ferguson bagged his fourth promotion as Posh manager, a club record that’s unlikely to be broken. At a fans’ forum Ferguson was described as bullet-proof’ by co-owner Stewart ‘Randy’ Thompson, which was music to the ears of sensible fans. After all who better to steer Posh to promotion from League One next season?

G is for GYOLLAI, Dan a GOALKEEPER who claimed Posh were blocking his transfer away from London Road. Fry retaliated by saying they’d only received ‘paltry’ offers for a player who failed to make a single League One appearance in the 2020-21 season, but promised to let him know when ‘Real Madrid come calling.’ Madrid never did, but Maidenhead did and that’s where Gyollai is now. And GOODBYE to the likes of Mo Eisa, Niall Mason, Ethan Hamilton and Louis Reed who all played small parts in the League One promotion before leaving the club in the summer.

H is for the chairman’s ‘Hard Truth’ podcast which has gone from strength to strength in 2021. It takes a lot of self confidence to offer advice to Liverpool, Manchester United as well as clubs lower down the Football League ladder when your own team is struggling so badly and his weekly request for me not to make headlines out of his latest headline-grabbing statement never fails to amuse. The media, his own players and politicians have all felt the chairman’s ire and his late year rant about the possibility of more lockdowns was a gem. ‘‘That moron who runs Wales and that little idiot running Scotland love a lockdown, while Tories in England need to get rid of their idiot in charge,” MacAnthony said and you could hear the roars of approval throughout the land.

I is for IDRIS Kanu who became the 19th serving Posh player to win a senior INTERNATIONAL cap when playing for Sierra Leone. Kanu is currenly in Africa preparing for the Africa Cup of Nations.

J is for JACK Marriott who accepted a huge paycut to leave Derby County and return to Posh in the summer. No-one expected him to replicate the glorious 33-goal season he enjoyed at London Road a few years back, but pace in behind and Championship exprience made Marriott’s arrival on a free transfer look like a no brainer. Sadly he came with a worrying recent injury record and four starts and one goal into his comeback he suffered what Ferguson called ‘the worst hamstring injury’ he’d ever seen in a September Championship defeat at Reading.

K is for the Posh kids. Some, like Harrison Burrows, stayed at London Road, but others like Flynn Clarke (to Norwich), Adler Nascimento (to Crystal Palace) and Sam Proctor (to Aston Villa) sought fame and fortune elsewhere. Nascimento (16) and his family received a staggering £250k signing on fee from Palace while 13 year-old goalkeeper Proctor cost Villa £100k. Premier League clubs love to hoover up young talent before moaning they don’t have enough players to fulfil fixtures down the line.

L is for LOYALTY (see kids for lack of) and Posh, commendably but naively, offered extended contracts to virtually all the senior players after winning promotion from League One even though some were bound to struggle at the higher level. The Posh use of the emergency LOAN rules enraged their League One promotion rivals. When Christy Pym picked up an injury, Posh were allowed to bring in a taller, more agile and much better ‘keeper Josef Bursik on loan from Stoke City rather than use their back-ups and he made a crucial penalty save in a vital late season win at Charlton. As soon as Posh sealed promotion Pym recovered and played in a ‘dead’ final game of the season at Doncaster. Funny that.

M is for MILLION pound signings which are becoming quite commonplace at Posh. It’s the sum which persuaded League Two side Exeter City to let forward Joel Randall move to London Road in the summer, although Posh are paying the sum over the length of his four-year contract. Ferguson celebrated MILESTONES of 500 games as Posh boss and 700 games as a Football League manager.

N is for NORBURN, Oliver who has created such a favourable impression on and off the pitch, he’s replaced Mark Beevers as club captain.

O is for OPENING day of the Championship season when the alarm bells started ringing about the troubles ahead. Posh fielded a side so ill-equipped for Championship football (no Dembele, no Jack Taylor, a half-fit Clarke-Harris) one wondered what had gone on at the club in the summer re fitness work as well as recruitment. Posh lost 3-0 at Luton in the first game, a result that flattered them.

P is for PYM, Christy whose post-match row with Ferguson after a defeat at Reading was serious enough to send the 26 year-old into exile and, even worse, to Stevenage. It’s not a stretch to admit POINTS deductions for Derby and Reading are keeping Posh hopes of survival this season alive. One word we hope has disappeared by the time 2022 is over is PANDEMIC as Covid messed with club finances as well as fans’ enjoyment.

Q is for QUALITY and the best goals of 2021 from Jack Taylor (at Plymouth), Joe Ward (v Ipswich) and Mo Eisa (at Doncaster).

R is for REST in peace to all Posh players and fans who lost their lives in 2021. Class midfielders Freddie Hill and Alan Slough were among the former players to pass away. The club’s Championship RECRUITMENT was called into question before a ball was kicked with some justification it seems as...

S is for SUMMER SIGNINGS. Many arrived and only midfielder Norburn and, to a lesser extent, goalkeeper Dai Cornell have impressed. The jury remains out on Jorge Grant, injury-stricken Joel Randall and Jack Marriott, Josh Knight. Joe Tomlinson and teenager Kwame Poku, but the suspicion remains that recruiting from Exeter, Colchester (Poku) and Eastleigh (Tomlinson) for the Championship was not a template for success.

T is for TRUST, as in ‘trust the process’, a phrase uttered on numerous occasions by the chairman when defending the club’s summer TRANSFER business. It currently looks likely to bite MacAnthony, who appears to be far more hands on than most other chairman/owners, on the backside, unless the expected mad dash for sales and signings in the January transfer window was all part of a cunning plan as Baldrickt might have said. Social media site TWITTER is a menace in the wrong hands and why prominent people don’t rush back and erase tweets that didn’t seem dodgy in the past, but are condemned now, is beyond me. Some sad person with too much time on his hands trawled through Clarke-Harris’s Twitter account soon after promotion was sealed and found a homophobic comment issued when he was a teenager, eight years previously. A four-game ban followed.

U is for Under 23s and Posh are currently mixing it with some big clubs at that level. Former Posh star Simon Davies succeeded Etherington as manager.

V is for ‘Operation VENGEANCE’ or the ‘VENGEANCE tour’ twin names given to the 2020-21 campaign by MacAnthony after Covid (and some pea-hearted, selfish rival clubs) stopped a Posh side with great momentum from going up the previous season. I must confess I cringed when I heard him say it, but fair play to the man as this was one phrase that certainly didn’t backfire.

W is for WEBSITE and Posh launched a new one as well as a subscription service. Charging people for something they’ve always had for free is an interesting idea.

X is for X-RATED which pretty much covers Posh away from home this season and also some language from one co-host on the ‘Hard Truth’ podcast, and the state of the London Road playing surface once a water main burst. ‘More suitable for growing portatoes,’ suggested one visiting official, but Posh were pretty effective on it though.

Y is for the Posh YOUTH team still going strong in the FA Youth Cup after a splendid win at Derby County in the third round. The under 18s are now managed by former professional player Jamal Campbell-Ryce.

Z is for ZZZZZ which pretty much describes a few games in 2021, most notably the 0-0 draw at home to Barnsley in weather that would have made Captain Scott of Antarctic fame think twice about venturing outside.