Do not fear, I am here! The Friday night move threw me, especially as I still thought it was Wednesday today!
Anyway, a trip up the A45, A605 and A1139 to face Cambridgeshires second team, Peterborough United, affectionately known as The Posh.
They sit in second place in the league, 76 points from 40 games, meaning they are just three behind leaders Hull and five ahead of third placed Sunderland. An eight goal win against us will see them go top before the rest of the teams play catchup on Saturday.
They have the best home record in the League, winning 14 of their 19 games so far, and scoring a league best 44 goals at home in the process (10 ahead of the next best Lincoln). Only Blackpool and Hull have left London Road with maximum points, although Peterborough were knocked out of the two big Cup competitions at home by Cheltenham (EFL) and Chorley (FA Cup) too.
Current form wise, 10 wins in their last 16 games has propelled them to the brink of a return to the Championship, a stage they were last at in 2013. Manager Darren Ferguson is in his third stint as boss, 56 wins in 110 games since returning in January 2019.
They, like us didn't play midweek, that has facilitated this change to a Friday night fixture, last time out they won 3-0 at Swindon and in their last home game on Easter Monday they drew 1-1 with Sunderland.
Led in the goalscoring stakes by Jonson Clark-Harris, a £1.2m signing from Bristol Rovers in August, he has hit 29 goals so far this season, 27 in the league and is only one of two ever present starters in their squad (the other being Mark Beevers). Clark-Harris is ably assisted by midfield pairing Sammie Szmodics and Siriki Dembele who have 13 and 12 goals respectively. Mo Eisa got a rare start on Saturday as they switched from their usual 4-5-1 formation to 4-4-2.
No current Cobblers connections in their ranks so moving swiftly on to the head-to-head.... there have been 71 meetings between us and our rivals, they hold the upper hand with 33 wins to our 20. We have failed to win any of our last nine meetings in all competitions, and we have to go back to April 2006 for our last victory over the swamp-dwellers.....a Scott McGleish goal gave us a 1-0 win that day at London Road. Our last three games have all ended with 2-0 victories for our opponents, the last of those games was of course the return fixture this season when goals in each half from Thompson and Brown gave them a comfortable victory.
We have won 8, drawn 7 and lost 19 times at their place. Famous games of the past include a 6-0 Boro win in April 1984, a 5-0 Cobblers win there in 1985, and a 4-0 Cup defeat in 1994.
Making a Friday night trip up from Devon to The Fens is referee Lee Swabey. On the league list since 2015 he issued his first ever League red card to Cobblers player Jason Taylor in our 2-0 defeat at Barnet. More recently his last Posh appointment came in a 2-0 win at Bristol Rovers back in November, and his last Cobblers game saw us win 2-0 against Salford at the PTS back in October 2019.
This season he has taken charge of 27 games and doled out 62 yellow cards, but not a single red......yet!
I wish you hadn't reminded them that an 8 goal victory will see them go top!
