Peterborough United’s trump card in the promotion bid could be a settled squad and Reece Brown’s loan deal explained

High player turnover in each of the last two summers hasn’t helped a club who have now failed to reach the League One play-offs in the last six seasons.

Previous Posh boss Steve Evans made a staggering 23 signings in his 11 months at the London Road helm and most of those were discarded when Darren Ferguson took over.

So far this summer Posh have made five new signings, while Reece Brown has returned to the Weston Homes Stadium on a season-long loan from Huddersfield Town.

Respected website ‘Experimental361’ has disclosed the latest ‘squad churn’ figures - a percentage of minutes accumulated by players in the 2019-20 season who are still at the same club - and Posh are top of the League One table with 84%. Lincoln City are currently bottom on 25%.

“There has been too much upheaval in the last two seasons,” MacAnthony stated on the latest edition of his popular ‘Hard Truth’ podcast. “We had to get away from that and limit ourselves to four or five in and out each summer.

“I would be amazed if eight or nine of the team that played in our last match against Portsmouth didn’t play in our next League One game at Accrington. That has to be a good thing.

“Many clubs have had to let a lot of players and go and there have been some signings, but not that many and I suspect there will be the biggest rush ever on transfer deadline day to get deals done.

“There will probably be a lot of loan signings from Premier League clubs which is a shame as there are an awful lot of players currently unemployed.

“I don’t generally like loan deals, but in the right circumstances I’ll go for it as I did with Reece Brown.

“We would love to sign Reece permanently. We like him a lot as a player and a person, but his wage at Huddersfield is too high and he understandably doesn’t want to take a cut.

“But we hope he will help us get up and if we are a Championship club with a bigger salary cap we could be able to afford him and to be fair Huddersfield are always a great club to deal with.

“Loan players don’t always bleed for the club though and it must be incredibly frustrating for fans to see a team stacked with players who are owned by different clubs.

“Hereford came up with us from League Two in 2008 with loads of loan players. It worked but soon it blew up on them and they were relegated out of the Football League.

“I prefer to sign players we pay a fee for on three year-deals with options of a further year because it protects us and benefits us when those signings succeed.”