Darren Ferguson sees room for improvement after Peterborough’s cup win

Posted Wednesday, August 09, 2023 by PA

Peterborough manager Darren Ferguson hailed the quality of his side’s penalties but felt the performance could have been better as they saw off Swindon to reach the Carabao Cup second round.

Joel Randall’s first Peterborough goal since his move from Exeter in the summer of 2021 was cancelled out by Rushian Hepburn-Murphy as the game ended 1-1 after 90 minutes.

Frazer Blake-Tracy and Jake Young missed in the penalty shoot-out for Swindon while Jonson Clarke-Harris, Ronnie Edwards, Joseph Tomlinson and Harrison Burrows all scored to send Peterborough through.

Ferguson said: “I’m delighted to be through. It’s a cup tie and your main focus is to get through to the next round and we’ve done that.

“Very, very good penalties to get us there, four really good pens, Nick (Bilokapic)’s obviously saved one so yeah, pleased to get through.

“I’ll have to look back at the performance and pick the bones out of it, but it’s easier to do that when you get through.

“We just weren’t there tonight in terms of the basics of the game, certainly the tackling and second balls and things like that we weren’t good enough tonight.”

Swindon manager Michael Flynn said: “I’ll take a whole lot from that. I thought we were the better team over the duration of the game.

“We had 23 shots away from home against a very good League One team who only made a couple of changes from Saturday and I was very, very proud of them.

“We did everything well apart from the first goal. I thought we went one-for-one, picked up second balls, we pressed them with the right parts, they had to change formation later on, we created good chances and I just wish we’d took a few more of the situations we created.

“But on the whole I couldn’t be happier really.”