Peterborough United manager wary of an early Stoke City onslaught, but he believes his squad will soon be as strong as it has been all season

Conor Coventry set up a last-minute winning goal for Ireland Under 21s against Sweden on Tuesday.

Ferguson is well aware opponents this season will be licking their lips at the thought of hosting a Posh team with the worst away form in the Championship.

Posh were hopeless in their last away game at Swansea when they conceded after 82 seconds, fell 2-0 down after 12 minutes and eventually ‘got away’ with a 3-0 defeat.

Posh players have attended meetings with psychology experts this week to try and get to the bottom of the poor performances on the road which have kept the team close to the relegation zone all season.

Peterborough United Manager Darren Ferguson during the painful defeat at Swansea.

“Stoke is a tough place to visit anyway,” Ferguson admitted. “But they will have spoken about our away form and I have no doubt they will try and kill us off early. That’s a consequence of our form away from home and we can only change that by delivering better performances.

“Only then will everyone stop talking about it. The longer it goes on the worse it will get so we need to change the narrative quickly.

“We’ve had meetings about it this week and hopefully we will show a better mentality and have the confidence start hurting teams ourselves.

“We certainly can’t have another Swansea performance. That was painful. In the end I was grateful to keep it to 3-0 and that hasn’t happened before in my career.”

Idrsi Kanu, Ronnie Edwards, Conor Coventry and Jack Taylor all returned from international duty fit, well and available for selection. Versatile defender Nathan Thompson is also available after serving a one-match suspension.

Young forwards Joel Randall and Ricky-Jade Jones are back in training after injury with the former expected to play in an under 23 game against Barnsley today (Friday). Only experienced striker Jack Marriott is a long-term absentee.

“We will soon look as strong as we have since the start of the season,” Ferguson added. “Having Nathan back is big as he enables us to change formations without using a substitute which I haven’t be able to do much this season. I try and sign players who can play in various positions within various formations.

“After we’ve been to Blackburn (November 24) we don’t have any midweek games for a couple of months unless we get an FA Cup replay so we can get more work done, organisational stuff, done on the training pitch.

“Even Christmas won’t be as hectic as normal as we go Bournemouth on a Monday night rather than a Saturday afternoon.”