Peterborough United star delighted for the team and their 'excellent' fans to go to Wembley after a win

The England age group skipper – he turned 21 last week – was outstanding in the 2-1 win at Leyton Orient. Edwards and centre-back partner Josh Knight both earned praise from manager Darren Ferguson after the victory even though it’s now seven games without a clean sheet.

Posh will now head to Wembley for an EFL Trophy Final showdown on Sunday against Wycombe Wanderers in good spirits.

Goals from Hector Kyprianou and Ephron Mason-Clark saw Posh 2-0 up at the break, but they had to survive a couple of late scares after a superb volley from Ethan Galbraith got Orient back in the game midway through the second-half.

"Every game is important, but we wanted to go to Wembley with a win,” Edwards said. “For us as players and for the fans who were excellent at Orient again. We’ll need them to be that good at Wembley as well.

"It was also important we bounced back from such a bad performance against Carlisle and we did. We played well and we won which is the main thing, although we still need to put teams to bed when we have the chance and we would still like to keep more clean sheets.

“You’re not safe at 2-0. It goes to 2-1 and then you have to hang on a bit, but we fought well and defended well so there are still plenty of positives to take. If we’d played against Orient as we’d played against Carlisle we’d have been hammered.

"I have a great relationship at the back with Josh Knight and we both like to start attacks as well. The gaffer gave us some criticism after Carlisle and rightly so. It’s never a good thing to get too comfortable.”