The Peterborough United Goal-Scoring Chronicle: Do Their Goals Reflect Success?
- UpThePoshcast
- Sep 23
- 6 min read
Tom Booth from Football Park writes:
Peterborough United, where do we begin?
A team who have challenged for Championship football for the best part of 15 years, now look a shadow of their old-selves and have lost their magical scoring touch.
The Posh currently reside second from the bottom in League One, after picking up just seven points so far this season. But, there is much more to the story than just points and wins.
Darren Ferguson is now occupying his fourth spell with the club. Whilst the Scotsman has brought plenty of success back to Cambridgeshire in his time, he has also nurtured a plethora of talent and grown his team a reputation for being avid goal-scorers.
Peterborough have had four Golden Boot winners at the club in their last seven League One campaigns, yet it took them over seven-and-a-half hours to even register an open-play goal this season.
Despite them having slightly picked up the form since then, statistics still show that Posh should be achieving much more than they are currently doing so.
The 92’s Entertainers?
With Peterborough United, one thing you can guarantee is goals. Disregarding this season, Posh have grown a staple reputation for putting the ball in the back of the net and have utilised the likes of Ivan Toney, Jonson Clarke-Harris and Jack Marriott to do so.
The three names mentioned have each won a Golden Boot, or two, from their time in Cambridgeshire, which ultimately helped their careers flourish.
Marriott scored 27 in the 2017/18 season to win it, Ivan Toney got 24 in the 2019/20 and Clarke-Harris won it twice in both 2020/21 and 2022/23, after netting 31 and 26 respectively. But, whilst these three stole the headlines, the team around them also managed to hit high numbers.
In the last decade, Posh have been the third tier’s top scorers on four separate occasions. In that time, barring the one season spent in the Championship, they have also scored a staggering tally of 668 goals in 403 games. That averages 1.66 goals per game, being one of the greatest averages out of any League One team.
The four campaigns where they finished as the league’s top scorers were 2015/16, 2019/20, 2020/21 and 2023/24.
In the 2015/16 season, Posh finished 13th in the table, yet still scored the most goals - a truly astonishing fact which is completely unheard of at League One level. Despite conceding less, with 73, they still lost more games than they won that year, which eventually led to their bottom-half finish.
Peterborough didn’t have a Golden Boot winner that season either. However, they hit such a large collective of goals because they had four players each reach double digits in goals, with a few players coming close too.
The recent 2023/24 campaign was very similar. Posh ended up in fourth place after what was a magnificent year, but unfortunately bowed out of the playoffs in devastating fashion. However, they did hit 89 goals that season, once again without a Golden Boot winner.
Six players from that squad reached eight or more goals for the season, with Posh’s front four combining for 45 of them.
Then finally, both 2019/20 and 2020/21, which were almost identical. The first campaign of the two ended early due to the pandemic, although Boro had already secured themselves 68 goals as of the start of March.
Their front three of Ivan Toney, Mohamed Eisa and Marcus Maddison had already struck nearly 40 goals before Christmas and had completely torn up League One.
Their promotion didn’t come until the year after though, as the likes of Jonson Clarke-Harris, Siriki Dembele and Sammie Szmodics netted a grand total of 83 goals.
An Unfathomable Campaign
Last season was certainly one to forget in the eyes of all Peterborough United fans - the club had just come off the back of one of their best ever seasons, failing to get promoted and losing the bulk of their squad - to then endure a miserable campaign in League One.
Posh finished 18th in the end. A truly disappointing result considering the immense standards Darren Ferguson had set at the club. However, there were times in the season where relegation became a plausible threat for the League One outfit.
During the season, they had two separate spells where they hadn’t won in five consecutive games, and this certainly made fans concerned. It didn’t help that Ferguson’s men were conceding a sheer abundance of goals too.
Their net rippled 81 times over the course of the season, which was more than any other club in the division, and recorded an average of 1.76 goals conceded per game.
However, there is another statistic from that particular campaign that is absolutely remarkable. Despite the Posh’s tendency to let goals in, they still managed to score 68 themselves.
On top of that figure being the most out of any other club in the bottom-half of the table, it was also more goals than the amount Phil Parkinson’s Wrexham scored.
Ironically, last term was also the season Wrexham finished second in League One, which granted them automatic promotion from the league. Furthermore, playoff winners Charlton Athletic also matched the Red Dragon’s 67 goals, meaning they scored less than Peterborough as well.
The Posh managed to net more than two of the three promoted sides, yet still had a -13 goal difference. Staggering.
It Has Only Got Worse
Peterborough’s torrid start to the 2025/26 season has become well-versed to most EFL fans across the country. Not only did the Cambridgeshire outfit pick up just one point from their opening six matches, but they also scored just two goals as well.
One of those goals was a penalty on opening day, against Cardiff, and the other was a last minute equaliser from Cian Hayes to grab Posh’s first point of the season against Bradford City in their fifth match.
It was for this reason that chairman Darragh MacAnthony brought in two more strikers on Deadline Day. One being Chelsea loanee Jimmy-Jay Morgan, and the other being £1m pound man Harry Leonard from Blackburn Rovers.
To give them their dues, these arrivals have certainly helped spark new life in the Peterborough attack, as the club have now scored four goals in their last two games. Furthermore, Morgan has grabbed two of these goals, with Leonard assisting both.
Despite losing the first of these two games 3-2 to Huddersfield, Peterborough did in fact manage to clock their first win of the season against Wycombe Wanderers last weekend, after defeating the Buckinghamshire side 2-1 on home soil.
While that takes Posh’s season tally to six goals, stats suggest they should have maybe done better.
According to Opta, Peterborough’s xG for the current season is at 7.17. Although, that isn’t exactly a paramount difference, their xG against is at 11.87 compared to the 15 they have actually conceded.
It is these fine margins that have really tampered with Boro’s campaign so far, showcasing a need to start cutting out silly errors and improving their final touches in front of goal.
Out of the 77 shots Peterborough have taken, only 22 of them have hit the target and they hold a conversion rate of just 7.79% - the fourth lowest in League One.
However, it is clear the underperforming team are confident in other areas, as they occupy the third highest passing success rate in the league with 80.9%. They also have the ninth highest average possession with 52.1%.
These figures suggest that Ferguson’s flowing football is still working up until it reaches the final third. However, it is that part which is the most important of them all.
Where does that leave Posh now?
It seems Posh have turned a corner in their recent performances, a 2-1 win against Wycombe Wanderers who found themselves in the playoffs last season and a resolute 1-0 win away to Plymouth Argyle who are freshly relegated from the championship, has given fans hope and enjoyment from watching their club again. A formation change for Ferguson’s men to a 5-3-2 has seen Peterborough look far more sturdy and reliable, whilst Jimmy-Jay Morgan seems to be flourishing here, scoring 3 in 3 for posh and beating his tally last season having scored only 2 goals in Gillingham's League Two campaign last season.
Darren Ferguson has seemingly worked his magic again and has started to turn what seemed like a sinking ship around, and as Peterborough continue to build on these positive performances the fans can hope for a better campaign than last season.
Comments