Peterborough United were 'completed outclassed' by Bradford City admits boss
Peterborough United boss Luke Williams admitted his side were completely outclassed by Bradford City as Valley Parade on Saturday.
Posh were beaten 2-0 by Graham Alexander’s side and were fortunate it was not more given the weight of chances the home side created in both halves. Bobby Pointon and Kayden Jackson scored the goals at the beginning of each half to consign Posh to defeat.
After being overrun for the first half, Williams brought Lucca Mendonca on for Jimmy-Jay Morgan at half-time and switched to a back five. He did later admit that move had little impact on the game and that his side were clearly second best in all departments.
Posh were without their leader at the back Tom Lees after he pulled out of warm-up with injury and lost chance to gain ground on the team sitting in the final play-off place. Posh still sit five points of sixth place, however, as Huddersfield were beaten at Stevenage in the early kick-off. The gap to the bottom four remains 12 points.
Williams said: “It was an incredibly difficult afternoon against a very, very good side. They were streets ahead of us and we were no match for them.
“It’s a long time ago, but the opening couple of exchanges were very positive for us and Kyrell Lisbie has the ball very high up in the box and he makes a loose pass and they hit the ball forward to Kayden Jackson. He runs the two centre-backs and its a naive action to make no contact and he’s allowed to run and cause havoc. We end up on the backfoot and we don’t recover until we conceded.
“That’s the type of action we rely on Tom Lees for a lot when he is out there.
“If we had got anything today, we would have considered ourselves extremely fortunate, but we would have taken it of course. The reality is we were second best by miles and completely outclassed.
“The backline is all under 23. George 20 today, Dave 22, James 20 and Lucca at 18 went on. It’s a young backline, but I love that and if they’re not learning at this stage then there’s something wrong. What a brilliant arena for them to learn how to compete against that kind of team.
“The full-backs tried to cover inside the pitch and left the wide players open and they hit some fantastic passes to cause us a lot of trouble. With an extra player in the backline, we could spread those guys because they quite often had five players at the top end of the pitch.
"We matched them up, but I’m not sure it particularly stemmed the flow because they were still outstanding and then we lost more of the middle of the pitch. It looked like we couldn’t survive in the first half, we couldn’t survive another half of that.
“It would be wrong to place any blame at the door of Alex Bass because he has been incredible week in week out and he has kept the score respectable today.
“Maybe tiredness was a factor, but I don’t want to take anything away from Bradford as they were brilliant and they just completely outclassed us. We tried our very best to stay in the game and I’m very happy with so much of what I saw in terms of commitment, but it was too much of a mismatch today.”
Posh return to action on Tuesday (February 17, 7:45pm) as they travel to face Barnsley. The Tykes sit in 16th, six points behind Posh after drawing 3-3 at home to Wimbledon on Saturday.