Peterborough United plan to move through the gears as the League One season develops

MacAnthony has been encouraged by what he has seen in the last two Posh matches, both of which have been won, but you won’t catch him shouting from the rooftops about his team’s chances of making a well-timed run up the League One table and into the promotion race.

The chairman believes he has built a top-6 squad, but they are having to play catch-up after a dismal start to the season which has yielded just 7 points from their opening 9 matches.

Posh have a couple of tough matches coming up now at home to Lincoln City on Saturday and at Bolton Wanderers on October 4 and MacAnthony would be happy to grind out more wins like they did against Plymouth. His desire for free-flowing attacking football has been put on hold while Posh remain in the bottom half of the table. They are currently 23rd.

"We’re essentially playing a 36-game season with ground to make up,” MacAnthony said on the latest edition of his ‘Hard Truth’ podcast. “No-one is getting excited about 2 wins, but we are getting better and I’m optimistic about where we can go. The signs are good, but we need to go about things quietly

"For now it’s about going from second to third gear and then up fourth and fifth gears for the most important bit at the end. It’s all about winning at the moment and I’ll take that every day of the week. If wins happen the good football will follow. The 20 shots a game and the flair can come later.

"There are 4-5 teams towards the bottom of the table in a false position, and I include us in that. We will all believe we can flip the table in time.

"We have added resilience and nous to the squad and I believe we would have won half of our games if Alex Bass had been in goal for all of them. I’m most pleased for my manager. He would be the first to admit we shouldn’t have won zero of our first 8 matches, but there were tough issues to deal with and I can tell he is enjoying going in and working with this group of players.

"Last season was a big challenge for him. It was a horrible season with staff worrying about losing their jobs and taking pay cuts through relegation rather than trying to win a promotion, but Darren was determined to get us up the table and to win a cup. Listening to him now I can sense the enthusiasm again.

"We are now having to play an in-form team on Saturday, but we want to prove that the improvement in getting 2 wins is not a temporary measure.”