SirAndyOfCrosby
Well-known member
- Joined
- 6 Apr 2022
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This interested me so I had a look at Posh’s performance in the league in recent years.
Since getting relegated from the championship in 2012/13, they’ve been promoted only once - famously in ‘Operation Vengeance’ or whatever it was called. Further, in that time, they’ve also only been in the playoffs a further two times - both seasons the ones immediately following their relegation from the league above (ie 13/14 and 22/23). They otherwise finish around upper-ish mid table.
I suppose three top-6 finishes in their last nine seasons in this division isn’t too bad a hit rate, but it’s quite interesting I think how many (myself included) intuitively think of their recruitment policy as being something of the gold standard, the model by which we should all hope to live, when the actual efficacy on the pitch isn’t really that great.
Peterborough are, by any metric, a significantly smaller club than us. If someone said to you that in 10 years time Northampton (a better comparison with Posh) had achieved relative stability as a club regularly challenging for promotion from L1 and enjoying the odd year in The Championship you'd conclude that they're doing something right.
You're probably right that Peterborough have become an easy short-hand for a progressive transfer policy, and perhaps others have done it more successfully - but the general concept is that it allows clubs to consistently over-perform vs their size and historical status.
We're a bigger club and if we were to operate in this way I would expect us to exceed anything Peterborough have achieved in that time.