Darren Ferguson savours Peterborough clean sheet in victory over Bristol Rovers

Peterborough manager Darren Ferguson praised his promotion-chasing team’s defensive performance following their 2-0 victory over Bristol Rovers at the Memorial Stadium.

Ferguson spoke out after a first-half volley from Joel Randall and substitute Ricky Jade-Jones’s classy stoppage-time gave the Posh a morale-boosting victory as they get ready for the play-offs.

“I told the players that clean sheets will end up getting us promoted and it really is as simple as that,” Ferguson said.

“That’s why I enjoyed that win a lot and I’m really pleased with the players, especially in terms of what we did out of possession.

“I asked them to be more solid and compact and they did that really well and were really well organised. We limited them to next to no clear-cut chances.

“Keeping clean sheets is not simple to do and that’s why we had a good meeting before the game when we went through everything in detail.

“We looked back at some of the chances we’ve been giving up so and I asked them to be more connected and the players deserve lots of credit as they were outstanding.”

Ferguson was also pleased with his goal-scorers after Randall took his personal tally of goals to 11 while Jones now has 13 goals to his name.

“I still had one eye on if Derby slipped up and we were getting told about the Derby score but we just had to concentrate on our jobs here,” Ferguson added.

“After the first 10 minutes we got control and some of our football was outstanding.

“I was especially pleased with Joel because we’d been asking the team to team to get more bodies into the box to support our striker Jonson Clarke-Harris. And with Ricky we’d been asking him to get in front of his man more so it was really pleasing when he made the points safe.”

Rovers manager Matt Taylor said the result highlighted his team’s shortcomings.

“Their physicality was one thing that stood out for me,” Taylor said. “They were not only able to wriggle out of but drive out of certain situations and it showed there’s a real need for a added profile to this group.

“We have some fantastic ball players but speed, pace and power are other huge assets at this level and they had both the ball players and that today which is why they are such a good team.”

Taylor, who was without suspended striker Chris Martin, added: “We didn’t get close enough to man and ball often enough in the first half and we gave them too much respect certainly in the deeper layers of the pitch.

“They were able to go through the pitch on the back of it and it was a poor opening goal to concede. We forced more moments after the break but it didn’t materialise in the box.”