Darren Ferguson hails ‘confidence and belief’ as Peterborough hammer Shrewsbury

Peterborough boss Darren Ferguson hailed his side’s “confident” performance after beating Shrewsbury 3-0.

Dominant Posh secured a convincing victory against a Shrews side who had won five in a row at New Meadow before being turned over by the play-off contenders.

It is 16 points from a possible 18 for the resurgent visitors, who firmly have their play-off fate in their own hands with six games to go.

“It was a professional, mature and confident performance and I can’t pick many faults,” reflected Ferguson, who has delivered the club promotion on four separate occasions.

“It’s probably the most comfortable result I’ve had at Shrewsbury in my time as a manager. They have won five games in a row at home and not many teams come here and do what we’ve done.

“I thought we controlled the game from the first minute, it was a really confident performance from the players.

“It was a real performance of belief. I thought we were excellent.

“We had loads of chances and fortunately it didn’t come back to bite us, because on another day it does.

“We’ve got the quality to pick teams off like we saw in that second half.

“It’s another clean sheet, four on the bounce and three goals away from home, it’s another great day for us.

“It’s really important that we’re keeping clean sheets consistently and that we know how to defend because we know as a team that we’ve got quality all over the pitch. We’ve got goals in us so the more clean sheets the better for us.”

It was a disappointing defeat for the hosts as they were put to the sword by the play-off seekers.

Steve Cotterill’s side have ensured three straight losses without scoring and they have shipped 11 in that frustrating spell.

But Cotterill reserved his most damning criticism for the referee.

He moaned: “I thought the refereeing performance was awful. I thought he had a massive influence on the game with the penalty and it’s never a penalty.

“I didn’t think it was a penalty at the time, I’ve looked back at it twice in slow-mo and it’s never a penalty.

“The first goal was always going to be huge, especially on the back of last week we wanted to get our noses in front.

“The penalty changed everything really because we needed that first goal to get the crowd going.

“I thought the referee was so pedantic with everything. It was always a yellow card for us and nothing for the Peterborough players.

“We lost Christian Saydee and that doesn’t help at all. The injuries are hurting us at the moment.

“We can’t get by with those numbers and the injuries we’ve had. We’ve pushed it as far as we can.

“The lads will carry on, but it’s blatantly obvious. You need to have a smaller squad here to have better players, but when the injuries mount up it’s hard.”