Posh boss Ferguson insists the pressure is all on Luton

Peterborough United manager Darren Ferguson insists the pressure is all on Luton when the Hatters head to the Weston Homes Stadium tomorrow afternoon.

Town are making their first visit to the Posh since Danny Hylton netted in a 1-1 draw in April 2022 when both sides were in the Championship, as after winning promotion to the Premier League in the summer of 2023, successive relegations means they are now back in the third tier once more. Having brought in the likes of Jerry Yates, George Saville and Josh Keeley, Luton are now red-hot favourites for the title this term, with Posh believed to be one of the teams who will struggle to stay up, as they are ranked at 3-1 to drop into League Two.

Speaking to the Peterborough Telegraph, Ferguson, who saw his side finish 18th in the division last term, just five points above the bottom four, also beaten 2-1 at Cardiff City in their opening game of the campaign last weekend, believes the onus will firmly be on their visitors, as he said: “It’s an easy game to get up for. It will be a great atmosphere with Luton fans taking the entire end behind the goal. The expectations of other clubs doesn’t really interest me as we have to focus on ourselves, but all the pressure is really on Luton.

“If we play like we did at Cardiff we won’t win many games. We were disappointing in possession, but our style won’t change. We will try and take the game to Luton. We will be aggressive against a side with great experience, some physically strong players and a manager who knows the division. We know what we are up against, but we are excited about playing our first home game.”

Posh are expected to be without goalkeeper Alex Bass (foot) and defender Sam Hughes (Achilles), although Oscar Wallin and Bradley Ihionvien have both recovered from knocks. Despite Luton struggling to really hit any kind of heights against AFC Wimbledon in their opening night 1-0 success, with the Dons making their intentions of coming for a point clear from the opening whistle, Bloomfield knows that on the road, teams might actually look to attack his side, as he added “There going to be different expectation on us this season because of what’s happened and where we were two seasons ago, 15 months ago.

"That’s going to add expectation and we have to deal with that. We have to know when the right moments are, react to that expectation and when we have to stay calm and considered in our performance, but emotion is good, in football it’s really good. If you use emotion in the right way it can be really powerful, so we’ve got to use the emotion of our season in the right way and build it as power for backing us and driving us on.

“We’re six weeks into this style of play that we want to do and we’re six weeks into the learning period. We’ve got some seniors who are taking it on quickly, we’ve got some young lads who are taking it on quickly and some others who we need to keep educating. There’s lots of information that’s going in and we’ve got to try and create overloads somewhere. As to be able to pick teams off you have to be able to create an overload somewhere and if teams aren’t going to press then we’re going to need a different option.”