Peterborough manager Darren Ferguson spoke to his club’s official website after his side’s 2-1 League One defeat against Carlisle at Brunton Park, Ferguson saying his side were very unlucky with some of the incidents in the game:
“You get parts of the season where you can feel sorry for yourself and blame everyone else. But, I would say some of the things that transpired today, we were just very unlucky to get some of the things that went on. The red card was soft, if you are getting red cards for that there would be about four of five in a game.
“But, we had an opportunity with ten men, we go 1-0 up and we have lost two goals very quickly one after the other. Both really poor goals and nothing to do with the numerical advantage Carlisle had. Then Grant McCann has got the chance to get us a point with ten men and you would probably take that, and unlike him he has hit the post.
“When we went down to ten men I wanted to keep Lee Tomlin closer to Britt Assombalonga because otherwise we would never have got out, and I thought they did that really well. Infact at 1-0 I thought we would go on and get another goal, I really did, I thought we would pick them off. But, you have to defend better than we did and unfortunately we have switched off on both occasions. The second goal is appalling, three out of our back four have made mistakes, but it was just unfortunate Macca couldn’t get us a point.
“There was a foul on Tomlin in the build-up to their equaliser but there were a lot of decisions that went wrong. I thought the performance of the officials as a whole was poor. I could be really honest and give my honest opinion of the referee [Seb Stockbridge] but then I will get in trouble. I think the standard is really poor, I really do, I think the standard of officiating has gone down. But, that is just my opinion, people will agree or disagree but I just didn’t think we had the rub of the green today.”
“Tomlin has hardly touched him for his late booking. I have seen fouls go on today, Danny Swanson got booted all over the pitch and never got a foul against him. With Lee Tomlin their boy has fallen over as if he has been shot, and then it has taken the referee three minutes to book him. But, he had the fourth official in his ear, make sure you book the number ten Tomlin, he said it three times to him so he was always going to do it.
“It is my responsibility to pick the players up, but sometimes the players have got to take that responsibility as well and they have got to pick themselves up. I believe they do have the character in the dressing room but we will soon find out won’t we. I feel we have been in these sorts of positions before and you need the character and it is a big challenge for us.
“I just picked a squad today that I felt had the right balance about it. Obviously, I wanted a bit more freshness in midfield so I made three changes in there and put Tomlin further up. I thought my two centre-halves in Shaun Brisley and Michael Bostwick did fine, there was a mistake by one of them for the second goal, but I didn’t think that Carlisle caused any problems with physicality because the centre-forward that played against for the majority of the game [Lewis Guy] wasn’t a big one, so that was never going to be an issue I don’t think.
“Whenever we have had certain challenges like this we have responded very well, we have to do it again. You have to look at the teams around us, we have beaten Wolves, Preston and Rotherham, Brentford are the only team that have actually beaten us in the top six and we didn’t deserve to lose that game. So, we hopefully have to continue that record, but I will guarantee that my players will be ready for the Brentford game up next and we will make sure we give our all to get a win and the players know that already.”