Darren Ferguson sacked by Peterborough?

Even though Peterborough are currently remaining silent on reports while I write this, the man who lead the Posh from the bottom division of the football league to the Championship has apparently been relieved of his duties. Chairman Darragh MacAnthony appears to have taken the decision after Peterborough’s poor start to the season; the Posh currently sit bottom of the table with only two wins to their name. But any football fan must ask, where is the justice in this for Ferguson? I personally find it a shame that McAnthony has taken this decision and i’m sure many fans of the club will feel the same.

Peterborough has been quite a colourful club in recent years. Whether it be inviting disgraced TV pundit Ron Atkinson and a bunch of sky TV cameras into their club to “sort things out” or engaging in a legal dispute with Victoria Beckham over the naming rights of the clubs nickname ‘the Posh’, many English fans will be well acquainted with the name. Sky Sports favourite and director of football Barry Fry will also be familiar face to football fans, being one of those larger than life characters within the game.

This latest bit of news from Eastern English side though confuses me some what. How can any chairman justify sacking a manager who has won back-to-back promotions for your team and also shown great commitment throughout, notably rejecting the chance to manage Reading this summer – instead preferring to sign a new four year contract with Peterborough. The club is bottom of the table and on poor form, but you should expect that if you’re going up into a new league; Ferguson hasn’t even been given the opportunity to turn things around in any manner.

As mentioned above, Barry Fry is a recognisable figure from the club. A former manager and chairman who has always had the clubs best interests at heart. A meeting on Monday 9th November was scheduled after the club suffered another defeat to top of the table Newcastle United; a team they were hardly expected to beat. I wonder what Fry himself makes of this decision and how much of a say he had in it; he’s a man who’s whole life has revolved around football and surely he would realise Peterborough have a brilliant thing in Ferguson.

Maybe I could be wrong here but that scheduled meeting for Monday maybe have started out as a review of the clubs form and possibly gone a bit far and ended up with the worst possible scenario. Even then, to let Ferguson go suggests that the board’s ambitions for the club are currently set too high. They have shown little faith in one of the brightest young British managers and once again we see another reason why clubs look to hire foreign coaches; the Brit’s just aren’t given a chance to develop.

There are still 30 games left to play this season! 30! With all due respect, the Posh are not one of the big hitters in this league – nor are they expected to be. Any team that gets promoted to a higher league needs to prepare for the battles of relegation and build from there. Although some considerable investment has been made into the club, they have a lot of players that still need to adapt to the Championship. I can’t imagine any of the players are too happy about the decision, it’s clear that if he won two promotions then he obviously had a good rapport with his players.

It’ll be interesting to see who is brought in to replace Ferguson, I can’t think of many managers that could turn things around for the club. Ferguson is young so he is still developing, but at the same time has shown magnificent maturity in what he has accomplished. Any club that decides to snap him up will have a gem of a manager – I have already seen that Brighton fans are hopefull of the Scot filling their vacant managerial post after Russell Slade was given the axe. All I can see for Ferguson is success in the future and I hope he is back in management sooner rather than later.

It’s also quite ironic that Ferguson’s last game in charge came against another club whose chairman makes a few questionable decisions – Newcastle United. Anybody fancy getting the rumour mill going regarding a bit of Mike Ashley advice to MacAnothony?