Rochdale boss hails the bravery of his players and the counter-attacking skills of Peterborough United

Dale were the better side thanks to some impressive possession football in the opening 20 minutes, but had no answer to Posh once they had fallen behind following a dreadful error by goalkeeper Robert Sanchez.

Barry-Murphy, who has seen Dale lose just five of his 20 games in charge said: “Our lads made mistakes in certain areas of the pitch, but they’ve been so brave and courageous in the way we play the game since the start of the season.

“The minute things go against you and you concede goals from those mistakes the easy and the simple solution is to try and play safe and play long. But I will back these players to the hilt and I’m extremely proud of them even though the scoreline was such a heavy defeat for us.

“We had some good control in the first 19 minutes before they scored. We got hit by two sucker punches from two errors on our own part and they were difficult moments to manage, and we weren’t able to do that and the scoreline ran up very quickly.

“Peterborough are such a dangerous team on the counter attack. If they get ahead in games they can be very difficult to manage.”

Ivan Toney bagged a hat-trick for Posh with Marcus Maddison (2) and Mo Eisa also on target.

It was a first League One away defeat of the season for Dale who slid down the table to 16th.