What the hell is going on at Peterborough United?

After a terrible season where we battled relegation and fans endured some of the lowest quality football Peterborough United had produced in a decade, we were assured that things were going to get better. 

Photo credit: Lewis Storey

Despite those assurances, we have only a single point from all of August. 

If I had the opportunity to have just five questions answered to understand why we are in this situation, they would be these. 

1: Who is recruiting players?

It's fair to say that recruitment at the end of the 2023/2024 season was poor.

We had just ended one of the most exhilarating seasons in recent times. Posh's attacking flair and complete domination saw us sitting in automatic promotion places before dropping to fourth, then crashing out of the playoffs against Oxford.

Over that summer, we lost the talent and experience of Harrison Burrows, Ronnie Edwards, Josh Knight, Ephron Mason-Clark and Jonson Clarke-Harris.

Darragh has made it clear that since the collapse at Hillsborough in the previous season's playoff campaign, he and his manager, Darren Ferguson, wanted "young and hungry" with fast attacking wingers. Darragh wanted lots of possession and 600+ passes a game to completely dominate teams.

Ferguson had no problem implementing this style of play with such a gifted team. A team that was supposed to be part of a three-year rebuild project but completely outperformed even the most optimistic projections directly leading to lucrative offers for our players.

When they left, we wanted to recruit the next generation to play the same format. Our primary source of income is player sales, so sticking with signing bargains from lower leagues to develop them into, as Darragh likes to call them, "assets on the pitch", was expected.

In came:

• George Nevett from National League Rochdale

• Abraham Odoh from League Two Harrogate

• Chris Conn-Clarke from the National League Altrincham

• Rio Adebisi from League Two Crewe Alexandra

• Cian Hayes from League Two Fleetwood

• Jack Sparkes from League One Champions Portsmouth

• Oscar Wallin from Degerfors in Sweden

• Bradley Ihionvien from League Two Colchester

This youthful group of footballers, with very little League One experience, were signed as immediate first-team players, with predictable results.

To go from Edwards to Nevett, Knight to Wallin, Mason-Clark to Odoh, and in the winter window, Joel Randall to Conn-Clarke was nothing short of madness.

Developing young players under the guidance of seasoned senior players is what led to our standout 23/24 season. Ronnie Edwards was nurtured for three years before he became the standout player he is.

Throwing lower league players straight into the first team without experienced teammates and hoping for the same result was irresponsible.

This begs the question: who is responsible for recruitment? 

There is some mixed messaging from Darragh and Darren. 

Darragh insists that Darren has a say, but how much? Does he help pick individual players, or does he get two or three players on a list and then choose which one to go for?

Does Darragh's insistence on playing young players for profit hinder his manager, who is trying to build a squad ready for a draining and physical League One campaign?

This recruitment was so poor that we had to draft in Sam Hughes, Carl Johnston, and Tayo Edun in January to plug a woeful defensive line and keep us in the league.

These mistakes were compounded more recently by refusing to transfer list players who were clearly not up to scratch, as evidenced by the worst start to a season in modern history. 

Darragh told us to "not sleep on these signings" and "they will kick on massively in their second season". They’re now on the transfer list or playing with the Under-21s.

This naivety resulted in a flurry of loan signings to address the team's woeful defensive and attacking line in the final days of this window.

Our current squad is a bloated confused group of loan signings and journeymen that few fans will identify as a true Posh squad. 

We have given up on our wingers completely after transfer targets fell through, and what's in the building isn't good enough.

It's a muddled mess, but it's hard to know where the blame lies.

2: Why do we keep playing players who are clearly not good enough?

It became clear these players were not good enough for League One last winter when Kyprianou and Poku were injured and we fell down the table.

Worse still was Gustav Lindgren joining from Degerfors on New Year's Day for a reported £500,000 fee. Our Chairman waxed lyrical about him, saying:

"Gustav makes runs only Championship and Premier League players make. He will be a player who comes good. I'm certain of that. He will be a Golden Boot winner, and we will sell him for millions."

In a year since those comments, he has made 20 appearances across all competitions and scored three goals, two of which were against a heavily rotated Walsall team in the EFL Trophy group stages. It's not an exaggeration to say that he struggles to score when the goalkeeper is on the floor and the goal is completely empty.

Yet, he still manages to get into the changing rooms, pull on a shirt, and pretend to play football. And gets paid for it.

As does Odoh, who loses more balls than a blind dog playing fetch. I've watched him run with the ball, then leave the ball and keep running. I've also watched him run into a defender and fall over dozens of times in a game.

I'm convinced I'll be just as effective, and I can only sprint once before my wife has to organise a memorial clap for the next home game.

We are far too soft. Why didn't we transfer list those players in July, giving us a chance to offload them?

After a handful of games, they're so bad that some have been dropped to the Under-21s. Those who were playing a few games ago have had their role wiped out as we've ditched wing play for the foreseeable future and scrambled to draft in a bunch of loan players to play in a 3-5-2.

Recently, both the manager and the Chairman have backed Gustav, which makes me feel like I'm going insane. He may make good runs, sure, but he’s helping us make a run for relegation.

3: What is going on with injuries?

New signing Rio Adebisi played an entire season in League Two, and days after moving to Posh, he injured his knee ligament. He came back, played 14 minutes and then was ruled out for the rest of the campaign.

He still hasn't featured for Posh, and his return is constantly pushed back.

Katongo, Poku and Kyprianou all suffered hamstring injuries a few months apart last winter, which was nearly fatal to our season. Katongo returned to training and then re-injured his hamstring. He returned to his parent club.

Cian Hayes joined the treatment room after a knee injury late in the season.

In pre-season, Sam Hughes was ruled out for three months with an Achilles injury, and new goalkeeper Alex Bass was ruled out for six weeks after a foot injury against MK Dons.

Poku's replacement, Declan Frith, has been in and out of the treatment room since joining, first with an ankle issue, and now with a knee injury.

Injuries are all part of football, but we are either incredibly unlucky or something is going drastically wrong with our sports science and recovery departments.

A constant stream of injuries to key players hampers our ambitions.

Darragh talked up his physio department as being the best in class after keeping most of his first team fit a few seasons ago. Now, we're struggling to keep players on the pitch. 

4: Should Fergie go?

Fergie is the most successful manager in recent history for Peterborough United. Three promotions to the Championship and three EFL Trophy wins at Wembley speak for themselves.

He's managed to take raw talent and develop it into million-pound sales multiple times. More often than not, we are seen as an entertaining team, always near the top, fighting for promotion.

But in football, past success means little when you're struggling.

We're currently rock bottom with a single point. We are already eleven points off the play-off places and a seemingly insurmountable three points from safety. I know that the season isn't defined in September, but our trajectory doesn't show us flying up the table anytime soon.

The statistics don't lie:

• Our last League One win was on April 1st

• In the two play-off seasons, Ferguson averaged close to 2 points per game

• Last season, he averaged close to 1 point per game

• This season, he's averaging 0.2 points per game

We cannot go on like this.

He received a break as he lost all his senior players. He got grace because the new recruits were poor, and he had to strengthen in winter. He earned respect for keeping us in League One. He was given more time because of a poor summer window, and now he has over 30 players, including 15 new ones to sort out and rightly wants time for that.

But how long does he get?

We do not deserve to stay up solely by virtue of being Peterborough United. We need to win games very soon.

In January, after being battered 5-1 by Lincoln, he looked dejected and spoke of a lack of belief and doing the basics.

Eight months later and one transfer window later, he repeats the same comments in post-match interviews.

It feels like the dying days of his empire. He is trying to find the solution, but it seems to evade him.

In my opinion, he has two months to save his job. He needs to find a solid eleven and a formation that works with them.

He's had a tough run, but he's not the only manager to face the same, and even though his legacy is secure, his future is not.

His current contract expires at the end of this season. Will he last that long, and if so, does he sign another contract?

5: Is our Chairman losing his touch?

It's difficult to resist the sheer charisma of Darragh MacAnthony.

The self-titled "El Presidente" bought Peterborough United from Barry Fry for just £1 back in 2007. 

Barry Fry, battling bailiffs and declining health from stress, cashed in all his properties and pensions to keep Posh going, and has said himself that Darragh saved his life.

Since then, Peterborough United has seen much success, including:

• Back-to-back promotions from League Two to the Championship

• Three EFL trophy wins, two back-to-back

• A near £2m investment in the academy that regularly produces talented first-team players such as Harrison Burrows and Ricky-Jade Jones

• Finding raw talent in players like Dwight Gayle, Craig Mackail-Smith, Ivan Toney, and Ronnie Edwards, who are sold for huge profits

The last two decades have given us more highs than lows, and the club, along with its fans, owes him gratitude.

When Darragh invested £5m in League Two Peterborough United in 2006, that was an almost unheard-of amount of investment. 

Now, it's fashionable for oil-rich Gulf States and American sports legends backed by deep-pocketed investors to buy football clubs in lower leagues, adding rocket fuel to their promotion ambitions.

Despite spending a decent amount of money each season, we are struggling to keep pace and are falling behind.

His magic touch is wearing off as we're buying more duds than successes. We had an identity and a strong plan, and over two poor windows we’ve had to ditch the lot and get competence through the door regardless of our principles.

He talks often about “his” scouts and I get the feeling that Ferguson is often blindsided by transfers in and out. Darragh recently signed Alex Bass and only told Ferguson once the deal was done.

The manager has made comments in the past about not being able to do his job if he has a clear out each year. Darragh reassures that that won’t happen before we lose half a dozen first team players.

You get an unparalleled level of access via X and The Hard Truth Podcast, where Darragh engages his natural salesman mode to sell us his optimistic vision.

However, this is becoming harmful to his reputation as he must walk back on big promises and find ways to turn a losing narrative into one of hope.

It starts to feel like he has his own reality that jars with what we see on the pitch week in and week out.

Can Darragh keep Peterborough United together without any serious outside investment and still propel us to the promotion races?

What would we learn?

There is a lot of anger and frustration throughout the fanbase. We are getting mixed messages from the manager and chairman without any real substance.

There is no right for any fan to know what goes on behind the curtain. However, in any profession, underperforming departments are held to account and I’m sure they are internally but it would help us understand where things have gone wrong and how they can be fixed beyond sheer optimism to get fans back onside.