Peterborough United were terrible on Tuesday on another grim night for a division full of stupefyingly boring teams
Let’s be honest, Peterborough United were terrible on Tuesday night as they went down 1-0 at home to new League One leaders Stevenage.
The fact we saw the worst refereeing display in a season littered with them was a reason, but not the sole one, for a first loss as Posh manager for Luke Williams.
The fact Posh lost to a horrible team whose tactics appeared to be aggression, to stop the opposition playing, hope to score from a set-piece, and then waste time without fear of punishment from said hopeless referee shouldn’t deflect from a deeply disappointing Posh display either.
The trouble with being so good going forward for two League One matches in a row is opponents will work overtime to find ways to stop you. Stevenage changing shape for the first time this season was a compliment to recent Posh performances.
And it worked a treat in the eyes of those who care little about entertainment. Stevenage have now created a blueprint others are bound to copy and it’s now up to Posh to find a way to combat it.
Different tactics and set-ups are part of what makes football so interesting. Even so this was another grim night for a division full of stupefyingly dull sides.
TALKING POINTS FROM POSH 0, STEVENAGE 1…
1) Everything should have been in Posh’s favour last night. They were in good form, Stevenage had been struggling. Posh were scoring for fun, while Stevenage had been firing blanks. Posh even had two more days to prepare for a game that had potentially big consequences for both sides and yet the home side looked off it from the opening minutes. The Stevenage switch to five at the back appeared to cause confusion and hesitation. The fact the visitors were much sharper in the early stages, won all the collisions and kept nicking the ball off Posh players appeared to suck the confidence from a team who had run rings around a table-topping side in their previous outing. It was all rather mystifying. Posh players stopped moving, no-one appeared to want the ball which meant even throw-ins were taking an age to deliver. Space in the middle was blocked off so Posh were forced wide towards wingers who dropped too deep to make a difference. You have to say the Stevenage tactics worked perfectly in terms of restricting Posh. It was a good job they also lacked any quality or threat going forward or a heavier defeat could have been inflicted.
2) It was always going to be interesting to see how this new-look Posh side reacted to falling behind. It hadn’t happened before this game and Posh were left with 75 minutes or so to mount a response, but they failed miserably. They did find themselves in decent attacking positions at times in the second half, but the execution when crossing was poor. Posh didn’t find a decent weight of pass or cross all night. Too many were intercepted or just sailed/dribbled out of play.
3) It’s easy in hindsight of course, and the same starting XI for Posh was perfectly understandable, but Matt Garbett has the ability to take the ball under pressure and his next movement is then usually a forward one. Defensively Stevenage cruised through this game for the most part. Posh went backwards so slowly so often it was like the previous manager had set the team up.
4) It might not be a bad thing to see a dampening of some of the hype. This Posh team won’t stay in the bottom four, but talk of play-offs and promotions, from me included, just creates pressure a team with 10 defeats in 16 games doesn’t need.
5) Referee Ed Duckworth’s two previous outings had been in the middle for Championship games. That’s rather staggering on the evidence of last night. Time wasting continues to be a scourge of the professional game and yet Duckworth at no point appeared to try and hurry up some rather blatant gamesmanship from the visitors. The ball appeared to have been out of play for most of the second-half. Indeed Duckworth seemed to be moving in slow motion himself, taking far too long to set up free kicks and failing to ensure a multi-ball system introduced to speed up play worked as intended. The Stevenage goalkeeper took full advantage of a weak referee by taking an age to do anything. Add in the failure to caution cynical fouls and the refusal to give Posh what looked like a blatant second-half penalty and it confirmed a poor night for someone who looked way out of his depth. And we played just nine added minutes overall which was simply absurd given what was going on.