Peterborough United

Last Season at a glance

10th in League Two

Was a season which never really got going last year. They started off with the all seeing Keith Alexander who had them on the fringes of the Play Offs, before he started spending money on players, then started losing, then got the sack.

Ferguson jnr was brought in and they spent the rest of the season hovering around mid table.

Who said nepotism was dead in football?

Ferguson was drafted in from Wrexham last season for his first managerial job to shake up the dormant Peterboro following their big money buy out. Alexander had not worked out, and so the powers that be saw Ferguson junior as the one to lead them on their own revolution.

So far, its not been a massive success story for him. He's won just about as many games as he's lost, and there was no immediate impact upon his arrival.

The owners at Peterborough have big plans for the future and it will be hard to meet their expectations. That said, I can't see Ferguson being pushed out of the door on the first sign of a bad run. Given everyone points to his Dad's time at United and how it took him a few seasons when any manager  is struggling, it will be especially true with the younger version.

How could it possibly go wrong? They say money can't buy you success. Which is a load of b******s because it can. And it especially can if its spent wisely.

Ferguson appears to have done that with Peterborough. It would have been very easy to go out and start bringing in household name players who were coming to the end of their careers. Almost showbiz signings, but he's backed away from doing that, and he's been very precise with who he has brought in. In some cases, they don't make any sense like Charnock coming in from Northwich, but you'll know that he has a reason for fetching him in when the funds were no doubt there to bring in more obvious signings.

And there is the basis of a side which can challenge already there. They fetched in the Conference's leading scorer midway through last season, in Mickail Smith and everything points to him continuing exactly where he left off. He settled immediately scoring eight times in fifteen appearances. He has been heavily backed to be the leading scorer this season.

And if it comes to the January transfer window, and Posh have to go out and splash the cash to ensure they stay up there, or to replace an injury victim, then they will be able to do so. That in itself gives them an obvious advantage over the rest of us.

Well did we see any suggestions last season that Ferguson was launching a revolution of his own? The only evidence we saw was form which in all honesty was worse than what Alexander had when he was in charge.

This is Peterborough after all. We saw from the TV documentary what a mess there club has been in, and there are still one or two faces still hanging around from those days. When a dressing room is lost like that one was, it can take a long while to turn things round.

And with such a big squad, it's going to be tricky to even know the names of all the players, nevermind keep them all happy.

Regular readers will know that from time to time, we can get a bit snobby about the non league. We tend to see relegation from the football league as being the equivalent to falling off the edge of the world, with nothing at all underneath it.

So when you get someone who has scored a whole host of goals in the Conference, we don't tend to get particularly excited by it. Grazioli at Barnet is proof of that. Loads in the Conference, bit part player in the League. There's others.... McNiven, Mullin, Clare, Twiss. All highly rated in the Conference. Some have stuck, and others have tried the League and failed.

But Mackail Smith seems to have made an immediate impact. He came in and scored goals straight from the off, even if the team themselves weren't firing on all cylinders.

And at 23, he's still got plenty of time to develop his career. If he can score with the regularity that he did for Posh at the tail end of last season, then there will be no holding them back.

We're not entirely convinced by this prediction. There's a lot of things which are leading the whole world and his dog to predict Peterborough as champions for this season, but I think there's a lot of things which could count against them.

The main one is the manager. There's a lot of expectancy on his shoulders, and there's no doubt pressure on his shoulders from the board to deliver the goods this season. But is he up to the job? That's the big question.

Has he got the job because he has all the skills that is required or has he got the job because of his surname? Unlike when we talked about Ince, you can be assured that Ferguson junior knows the division through and through from his playing days, so he won't fall short on that, but he's untested and he certainly wouldn't have been in this position had it not been for his Dad. And Clough jnr isn't exactly pulling up any strings as a manager.

There's issues with the squad too. The size of it will be an issue. It's never easy keeping a squad of that size happy. Maybe in the top flight, but nobody has ever really been in a position to rotate a squad down here in the basement, so there's nothing to suggest that approach will work.

But in Ferguson's credit, he's not gone down the Sven approach and started playing Championship Manager signing big name players all over the place. Indeed, out of all of his signings, there's no big time charlies drafted in just because he could do.

But what tipped the balance for me, was the signing of Dean Keates from Walsall. He was in my opinion the best player in the division last season, and he will be the engine room for the Posh this season and the man who drives them forward to win the title.

They've got a forward line up which can score goals, but in Keates they will ensure that they are playing up at that end of the pitch in the first place. He's a first rate player and will be the difference between a side challenging and actually doing it.