Tag: Peterborough United

Would Peterborough Benefit From Stepping Off The Rollercoaster?

Posted by | Apr 7, 2010 | |

The phrase goes, “Marry in haste, repent at leisure”, but supporters of Peterborough United may be wondering this week whether this caveat also applies to divorce. The rise of the Cambridgeshire club from League Two to the Championship had been one of the more understated surprises of the previous couple of years, but this season, in the harsh glare of Europe’s fourth most watched league, the club has stalled spectacularly and last weekend became the first in the top four divisions of English football to be relegated. In the cold light of day, if recriminations are likely to start at London Road, the target of those may well be the club’s owner, Darragh MacAnthony, who this week appointed the fourth manager of the season at London Road. MacAnthony had, prior to his involvement with Peterborough, been involved in an attempt to take over at AFC Wimbledon, but the supporter-owned club told him that they weren’t interested in his desire to take their club over and run it as his fiefdom. He was only thirty when he took over at Peterborough United in 2006 and, early in his reign, made a public statement in a match programme in which he stated that he would get the club two successive promotions. This is something that he did deliver upon, but some might wonder what the point of two successive promotions would...

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Keith Alexander: 1956-2010

Posted by | Mar 3, 2010 | |

At the time of writing, England are about to kick off against Egypt in their first friendly match of 2010. This is football as a peculiar mix of Hollywood and pantomime, a story that often seems to have very little to do with what goes on during the matches themselves. It’s a world that frequently feels alien. Away from this, however, there is a whole other world of football going on, a world in which people give up their youth, their other aspirations, relationships and families because they believe in the game. Often away from the spotlight and the wilder excesses of the game, the people that inhabit this world are often easily dismissed as “journeymen”, but they are crucial to our narrative of football. We lost one of them last night. Neither Keith Alexander’s playing career nor his managerial career scaled, as some might put it, the heights. As a player, he spent fourteen years in non-league football before going on to enjoy something of an Indian summer in the Football League with Grimsby Town and Mansfield Town, whilst winning a handful of caps at international level for St Lucia. It was not, however, his playing career that marks out his significance in the game, rather the managerial career that followed it, a managerial career that lasted from 1993 until right up until his death at the tragically...

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Match Of The Week: Peterborough United 4-4 Cardiff City

Posted by | Dec 29, 2009 | |

Peterborough United came from 4-0 down to manage a draw against Cardiff City yesterday, a result that said something about the spirit of their team and about the shortcomings of a Cardiff City team which is trying to think of itself as a Premier League club in waiting.

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United Sack Ferguson & May Repent At Leisure

Posted by | Nov 11, 2009 | |

Darren Ferguson has left Peterborough United “by mutual consent”. This particular phrase is usually code for “we’ve sacked him but he has agreed to keep quiet in return for some money”, but in this case it may be more literal than is usual since the severance may suit all parties equally.

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Match Of The Week: Peterborough United 2-0 Leicester City

Posted by | Mar 29, 2009 | |

It’s Saturday lunchtime and England are playing later on this afternoon, but you wouldn’t know it in Peterborough. The top two divisions don’t have matches scheduled so that England can parade around in their strange new shirts, so Peterborough United against Leicester City might just be the biggest club match being played in Europe today. It’s second against top in League One, a situation made possible by the late season collapse of the Milton Keynes franchise, who have slumped down the table in recent weeks. They have, in one of the few completely positive points of what has turned into a fairly dispiriting season, winning just one of their last eight matches, allowing Peterborough to catch them up and overhaul them. The lunchtime kick-off is on police advice after trouble in the town centre for Peterborough’s home match against Leeds United, but there seems little enmity between the supporters of the two clubs, a situation perhaps enhanced by the widespread hostility towards their nearest rivals, Leeds United, Millwall and Milton Keynes. As time has worn on this season, they have looked more and more like the teams most deserving of promotion. Peterborough have won eight of their last nine matches, while Leicester have been less consistent recently but have been at or near the top of the table for the whole of the season. In the press, the comparisons...

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