Still concerned? You should be as Peterborough United are worse now than they were during an abysmal start to the season
It’s some going by Peterborough United to be even worse now than they were during an abysmal start to the League One season.
Three wins in the first 13 games was enough to see off the most successful manager in the club’s history.
The current run? One win in 13 games under Darren Ferguson’s replacement, although the fact Luke Williams didn’t sign a single player in the squad is considerable mitigation.
And yet, barring two bad results at home and an unlikely swing in goal difference, Posh will survive in League One, but for how much longer after that? This is a club trending downwards. Last season’s 18th place finish wasn’t a blip after all. Next season’s League One will be considerably harder than this stodgy edition, one full of hoof-ballers, long-throw merchants and time wasters.
Only in Cloud Cuckoo Land can there really be a belief that half a dozen new players will transform this bottom six squad into a top six outfit. It ain’t happening unless Williams really is the managerial magician his chairman believes him to be. Recent evidence suggests that’s unlikely as he hasn’t yet found a way to stop his defenders losing possession in dangerous areas or a way to stop picking players who are hopelessly out of form.
The set up for this defeat at a vibrant Stockport County side was a mess, or to be generous, wildly optimistic. That was obvious even before Harry Leonard had taken advantage of Bolu Shofowoke’s excellence to steer Posh in front against the run of play after 14 minutes, and even more so after it.
Posh have a slow back four who are asked to play too high up the pitch. Their protection for this game was just Archie Collins so no wonder Posh were overrun in central areas and out wide by a strong opposition. It’s a layman’s view for sure, but it needed changing after 25 minutes, yet it wasn’t changed until the 65th minute by which time Louie Barry had scored his first goals for 16 months, three of them, to give County a 3-1 lead they never looked like surrendering. Goalkeeper Alex Bass had stopped the home side doubling their score by then.
When Barry was scoring regularly in his first spell at County he roamed in from the left and struck the ball into the opposite corner of the net. Even I knew that and yet Posh players seemed totally unprepared for it. Or they weren’t good enough to cope, which with accident prone defenders James Dornelly and David Okagbue on that side of the Posh defence, is a reasonable assumption. At this point Williams is doing his right-back no favours by continuing to pick him. Dornelly is an Academy graduate who clearly cares. Hearing reports of him heckled at the final whistle by some visiting fans, and reading scathing social media comments, was rather sad, but frustration and even anger are understandable emotions right how.
Posh did look a threat when they managed to retain possession. Shofowoke gave former Posh man Tayo Edun a hard time on the right flank, but the potency on the other wing has disappeared, even though Kyrell Lisbie was operating against the makeshift side of County’s defence.
It’s hard to be too critical of Lisbie as he’s enjoyed a fine season, but he missed a great chance to make it 2-2 and another one to bring Posh back into the game at 3-2. He can’t be replaced though as Williams clearly doesn’t fancy rival wingers Cian Hayes and Declan Frith, and few will blame him for that. Jimmy-Jay Morgan and Matty Garbett flitted in and out of this game before their inevitable substitutions, while Collins was a shadow of his normal self, but he must be exhausted after running around covering for lesser mortals all season.
Can Posh really muck up what clearly remains a favourable situation? Can they really still be relegated? Such is the lack of confidence and belief on pitch and on the terraces I wouldn’t rule it out. As one astute X poster suggested on Saturday night, the form is so dire and the desire to stop conceding goals is so lacking it’s actually now seen as a disadvantage to have two rather than one game remaining just so the goal difference advantage can be protected.
Mansfield Town are not the sort of team to leave for the beach early as back-to-back away wins at Stockport and Huddersfield, two far better teams than Posh, confirms, while who knows how a former playing hero now in charge of final day opponents Doncaster feels about the chance to relegate a club that has twice sacked him as a manager?
At least fourth-bottom Exeter have to beat a Bradford City team who still need a point to secure a play-off place to have any chance of escaping the drop so Posh could be terrible for two more games and still survive. That would rather sum up the last few months of relying on favours from others.
We will see, although Williams’ post-match comments were hardly inspiring.