Peterborough United talking points: 'The diminishing value of Ronnie Edwards, a manager more impressed by hard work and performance than reputation and Bali Mumba's behaviour'

You can have all the talent going, but if you don’t work hard and run hard it won’t matter a jot. Kevin De Bruyne combines the two and Cristiano Ronaldo used to, and Posh obviously have no player with anywhere near that level of natural ability.

McCann was fed the chance to use the heat and a ‘long week in Devon’ as mitigation and quite rightly rejected it, citing an expensive and comfortable stay in a decent hotel for a start. It was hot for the Plymouth players as well and they managed to charge about Home Park with little obvious discomfort.

The difference in pace, power and aggression between the two side was vast. But for the continued excellence of goalkeeper Lucas Bergstrom, Posh would have been dead and buried by the break.

McCann didn’t spare anyone in his post-match comments, including himself. He even name-checked goalkeeping coach Mark Tyler even though his number one priority has been the team’s best performer in the first three League One games.

We must hope the verbal kick up the backside has the desired effect as League One title favourites Sheffield Wednesday are next up at the Weston Homes Stadium on Tuesday.

OTHER TALKING POINTS…

1) Every week Ronnie Edwards is exposed to pacy, powerful forwards in League One his value probably diminishes. He was bullied by the assets of Cheltenham’s on loan striker Dan N’Lundulu on opening day and he was unsettled by the pace and non-stop running of Plymouth’s excellent centre forward Ryan Hardie on Saturday as he had been in the EFL Cup tie against the Pilgrims last season. McCann even switched Edwards to the right of his back three and moved Josh Knight centrally to try and cope with Hardie. It didn’t work and tellingly Edwards, who may well be feeling the effects of a busy summer scheduled with no real break, was the one hooked at half-time as Posh switched to a flat back four. Keeping Edwards, a teenager with plenty of time to add defensive grit to his undoubted ball-playing ability, is not going to be the difference between promotion or failure this season so maybe Posh should expect less of a transfer fee, take it and spend some of the cash on a left-footed centre-back as Frankie Kent’s careless concession of a penalty yesterday proved how vulnerable a right footer can be playing on the left

2) McCann wasn’t impressed with his own work on Saturday, but to be fair his tactical defensive tweak made sense as did the decision to introduce four substitutes for the start of the second half as his team, Bergstrom apart, had been that poor. Multiple changes worked against Cheltenham, but, despite a promising start to the second-half, it never looked like working against a better class of opposition. Switching to 4-3-3 was sensible, but not giving Joe Ward the first opportunity to take on an attacking role wide on the right was a strange one as he is surely more likely to deliver a goal-creating cross than Joe Taylor? Jack Marriott who had the ball at his feet in the Plymouth penalty area three times in the first-half could well have stayed on rather than Jonson Clarke-Harris who made no impact on proceedings at all. Ricky-Jade Jones troubled the home defence the most after the break and three mobile forwards might have been a better bet for Posh.

3) The easy option for McCann would have been to keep his bigger name players on the pitch and hope they improved enough to get Posh back into the game, but removing Marriott, Edwards and Jack Taylor in one go was bold and an early-season warning that this manager is impressed more by performance and workrate than by reputation.

4) Naturally the peformance of Bali Mumba yesterday raised a few Posh eyebrows, but it’s far easier playing against a shaky and sudbued League One team than it was against Championship opponents last season. He was very good going forward at Home Park and hardly exposed defensively, unlike Harrison Burrows on the left side of the Posh defence. Mumba won the penalty that sealed the points for Plymouth and now has three assists in three League One games. The apparent ‘disrespect’ Mumba showed to Posh people after his late substitution went unnoticed in the press box, but it’s shame if it did happen. It was hardly a controversial decision from McCann to send him back to Norwich early last season as he’d shown little and was never going to be part of Posh plans this term.

5) It’s three games into the season and Posh are fourth, albeit having ‘only’ having beaten two teams currently residing in the bottom four. Teams do have collective off days and far better they happen earlier than later. Mind you improvement on the road will need to be found quickly as the next three away games are at probable promotion contenders Derby County, Portsmouth and Bolton.