Posh’s transfer window history | The Holy Trinity, the promotion engine, and the summer Posh are still paying for

Tom Woods
12 hours ago
8 min read

We tend to remember windows by either one or two names.

Toney, Gayle, Boyd, Geohaghon.

Some windows were brilliant because they built promotion teams. Some were brilliant because they manufactured sellable assets. Some looked chaotic at the time and aged beautifully. Others looked confused on day one and have aged even worse.

Photo Credit : Joe Dent / Peterborough United

Here are the three best, and three worst of the MacAnthony era.

Transfer window stats	Figures
Windows	39
Total incomings	292
Signed under Ferguson	188
Not under Ferguson	104

A quick word on method

This is not a ranking of individual players. A great window has to do more than produce one good footballer. It has to shift the squad, change the season, create value, or leave the next manager something he can actually use.

A bad window is not simply a list of flops either. League finish, what the squad needed, what the moves cost, the age profile, the resale, and whether the man who inherited the group was handed a foundation or a mess.

The best windows

Honourable mention: Summer 2018 - the scattergun jackpot

One of Posh’s busiest windows obviously came under Steve Evans.

The jewel in the crown of that window was, of course, Ivan Toney. Toney belongs in any conversation about the best signings in the club’s modern history. He arrived from Newcastle that August for around £650,000, after leaving the Cobblers academy, and a few underwhelming EFL loans. Two seasons later, he left for Brentford in a deal that started near £5m and climbed towards £10m. The rest is history.

Siriki Dembélé, from Grimsby the same summer, was another hit. Matty Godden had quality, Jason Cummings started hot for a while too.

So why only an honourable mention? Because the window was all over the shop. For Toney and Dembele, there’s Colin Daniel, Josh Yorwerth and Aaron Chapman. Toney is one of the great MacAnthony-era buys, but the window around him was less coherent than the ones ranked above it.

Honourable mention: Summer 2021 - the one that aged well

At the time, it sat inside a Championship season that ended in relegation, so it cannot pretend to be a triumph. The window did not keep Posh up. Look instead at what it left behind.

Josh Knight came in permanently from Leicester after loan spells and became a fan favourite. Kwame Poku arrived from Colchester and turned into one of the most watchable attackers the club has had. Joel Randall gave us one top season, and at least had the decency to make his money back on the way out.

Ollie Norburn came from Shrewsbury and ended up captain. Add Emmanuel Fernandez and the money he made, Jack Marriott back on a free, and a young Joe Taylor as another sellable asset.

We didn’t survive a Championship season, but a lot of them ended up being among the better reasons to watch Posh in the years after it was over.

Third: Summer 2010 — the promotion engine

Posh had just been relegated from the Championship, the squad needed rebuilding rather than topping up, and the recruitment gave Posh the strength we needed to bounce back.

Having very impressively kept the hold trinity (though McLean left in January to Hull) following relegation, Posh needed to add a bit of experience to the middle of the park. In comes Grant McCann to run the midfield and take the set pieces. Lee Tomlin was the spark, a player who would go on to command more than £10m in combined transfer fees at Middlesbrough, Bournemouth, and Cardiff, picked up here for a fraction of it. Mark Little was the right-back who became a multi-season fixture. Nathaniel Mendez-Laing came in on a season-long loan from Wolves, made 40 appearances, gave the side pace and unpredictability, and went on to reach the Premier League himself. James Wesolowski gave some vital contributions when fit as well.

The team finished fourth in League One and, as we all know, won promotion through the play-offs, beating Huddersfield 3-0 in the final at Old Trafford.

Second: Summer 2020 — The finishing touches

Now the windows that won things. Summer 2020 built the side that finished second in League One and went back up to the Championship.

Jonson Clarke-Harris came in from Bristol Rovers in late August and went on to score 33 goals that season. Sammie Szmodics turned a successful January 2020 loan into a permanent deal. By the promotion season he was good for more than twenty goal involvements from midfield.

Then there is Ronnie Edwards, signed as a teenager from Barnet for an undisclosed fee - a National League kid who became a Championship regular, an England youth international, and eventually one of the most valuable academy-adjacent assets the club has produced.

It’s worth noting, summer 2020 put the finishing touches to another good window, Summer 2019. Kent, Beevers, Thompson & Pym were all part of the spine that took us up. I did toy with making this summer 2019 given that fact but I personally am not a PPG season truther. Shout-out to the January of 2020 as well, Reece Brown on loan, Sammie on loan and Jack Taylor. Three straight windows of knocking it out the park, those were the days.

First: January 2007 — The modern origin story

For Posh, you can trace our modern foundations back to one, January window.

In the space of a month, Aaron McLean, George Boyd, and Craig Mackail-Smith all became Peterborough players. The numbers still look unreal. Mackail-Smith scored 104 goals in 233 appearances. McLean managed 86 in 206. Boyd, 76 in 322. Between them, the trinity were involved in eight promotions across their careers, and they cost a combined pittance - Mackail-Smith £125,000 from Dagenham & Redbridge, McLean £150,000 from Grays, and Boyd £265,000 from Stevenage, which was a non-league record fee at the time and remains one of the best pieces of business the club has ever done.

That alone would be enough to be number one. But that’s not all. Darren Ferguson arrived as player-manager to build around them from Wrexham. He of course goes onto to manage the club so much over the next 19 years that Posh have made more signings under him than not. Micah Hyde brought senior composure. Gavin Strachan went on to become an assistant manager with time as well.

Darragh was a genuine visionary, he saw and exploited a market inefficiency in non-league that lead to back to back promotions.

It’s an edge Posh have lost in recent seasons (not even scouting Richard Kone, and CCC not working out). Finding the next market inefficiency (much harder now every club is data-driven) or a new edge (sounds like the academy is now that strategy) will be crucial.

The worst windows

Honourable mention: January 2013 — the survival window that did not do enough

This is the season that broke all our hearts. The January reinforcements just weren’t enough, hands up who remembers Alex Pritchard, Davide Petrucci or Florent Cuvelier in a Posh shirt? Thought so. Scott Wootton only misses out on that roll call because of his injury. Losing Boyd in February with no solid replacements was a killer. Frankly, Fergie is a miracle worker for having got us as many points as he did.

Third worst: summers 2015 & 2016

It’s honestly impossible to separate these two. The 2010s saw Posh mostly stuck in League One purgatory, spending eight consecutive seasons in League One, from 12-13 to 20-21. There was a pretty boring stretch (by Posh standards), 14-15 to 17-18, finishing 9th, 13th, 11th and 9th again. Here we find some of the worst transfers.

First the ‘good’ signings from those summers. Chris Forrester, Callum Elder, Ryan Tafazolli & Andrew Hughes, Gwion Edwards. You’ll understand why I put good, in quotations, even if that’s harsh on Gwion, Chris and Andrew.

Outside of that? 16 others including Lee Angol, Joe ‘The Goal’ Gormley, Brad Inman, Jack Collison, Hayden White and Souleyman Coulibaly. The reason these together most of all however, are that even the ‘good’ signings did not contribute to meaningful achievements, fulfilled potential, or moved the needle for the club. At least Hughes and Edwards turned a profit. Our worst finishes under Darragh until the last two seasons. If pushed, summer 2015 was worse, as Forrester turned a smaller profit, didn’t fulfill his massive potential, and we failed to sell him at peak value.

Second worst: January 2010 — the panic window

A Championship survival window that did not survive. Posh finished bottom and went down, and the recruitment did almost nothing to stop it.

Ryan Bennett aside, which was a pre-agreed loan to perm conversion.

However, so was Exodus Geohaghon.

Reuben Reid, Izale McLeod, Kerrea Gilbert, and Josh Simpson all came and went without solving the only problem that mattered, which was staying in the division.

For Posh fans a bit younger than even me, imagine the January 2022 window, but worse.

First worst: Summer 2024 — the summer Posh may still be paying for

And so to the window the club may not be done paying for.

The evidence that gives this section its teeth is the retained list just gone. By May 2026, the club had made available for transfer a long row of names from this recruitment cycle: Cian Hayes, George Nevett, Abraham Odoh, Donay O’Brien-Brady, Bradley Ihionvien, Chris Conn-Clarke, and Klaidi Lolos. When that many of one summer’s intake are listed inside two years, the window stops being a matter of opinion.

Those not on that list are mostly gone, Sparkes & Curtis both alternated between poor and awful in their time at Posh. Katongo’s return was disastrous (recently moved permanently to Kayserispor in the Turkish Super Lig, promptly relegated this season).

Tyler Young still gets mentioned by morons on Twitter sometimes. Wallin at least gave us a great Wembley performance before retiring at the grand old age of 24. Adebisi has played less than half an hour (though not his fault).

Only David Kamara and Bastian Smith remain. Muhamadou Susoho looked talented at times (now in the Turkish Super Lig with Kocaelispor, finished mid-table).

I do worry we’re giving up a little too soon on Nevett; and I’ve been a big backer of Hayes. But all of the above is clutching at straws. Until we get our money back on them, not a single one has been a hit. It takes time to recover from a window like that, as we’ve seen, all too often.

What does this mean, for this window ahead?

Our best, non ‘07 windows came when we needed to add the finishing touches, 3-4 difference makers, when we could already name 7-8 solid starters. I don’t think we’re quite there yet.

While last summer’s business was a marked improvement (Lisbie, Leonard, Bass, Garbett), there are still some question marks over others. I’m optimistic over some of those (Khela, Woods, Okagbue), but right now we simply don’t know how things will turn out. If Sam Hughes will be back to full fitness, if we’ll get our money back on Frith.

However there is no doubt we’re at least more settled than before, and last summer’s business was a massive step back in the right direction. One more summer like that, and we shouldn’t have to worry about relegation again. But another misstep, or even a below-average one, and another bumpy ride could be in store.