Darren Ferguson was once so determined to win promotion to the Championship with Peterborough United that he banned father Sir Alex from attending the play-off final – despite the fact it was being played at Old Trafford.
“He’s a jinx,” he explained. “There’s a bigger picture, he can watch it on the television.”
Ferguson Jr need not have worried. It was 2011, and true to form Peterborough won the play-offs and reached the second tier. Indeed that was one of four times their head coach, who returned to the club for a fourth stint in January, has won promotion with the club.
It’s become a running joke that the club’s managerial appointments operate on a never-ending roulette wheel, where instead of red and black you have the faces of Ferguson and Grant McCann. This time, when Ferguson took over from McCann at the turn of the year, nobody was really thinking about going up.
Peterborough were only three points off the play-offs but were on a desperate run of one win from seven league games. But after McCann’s sacking chairman Darragh MacAnthony and director of football Barry Fry knew there was no-one better to hire than his predecessor.
“He knows the club so well, his record speaks for itself,” former Posh captain Gabriel Zakuani tells i.
“He’s a very good man-manager, more than anything he gives the players a lot of confidence. You don’t want to let him down. He’s one of those managers where his standards are so high that you don’t want to go below those standards. He commands that respect around the place, because of the success he’s had with Peterborough United, his DNA’s in the club.”
Aberdeen goalkeeper Joe Lewis, who was at Peterborough during two of Ferguson’s previous spells, agrees. “He gets more out of players even than they believe they can give. He’s just got some real talent for getting the best out of people,” Lewis tells i.
“He just produces this magic, he’s got that magic touch, and you can see why Darragh and Barry and the people making decisions are drawn to him so frequently.”
It is unclear what lies ahead after the play-offs, with Ferguson’s contract up at the end of the season. The campaign looks almost certain to include a trip to Wembley, though, as Peterborough will take a 4-0 lead over Sheffield Wednesday into the second leg. Lewis believes that is no coincidence, as their players will not have been daunted by the size of club they were pitted against in the semi-final.
“I don’t ever remember us sitting down at the start of the season saying ‘we should get promoted this year’,” Lewis says. “but every game you felt like you had to win it, you felt the expectation from him. It doesn’t matter the name of the team you play against.
“When they played Sheffield Wednesday, a huge club, huge history, there would have been no fear whatsoever. It didn’t matter who we played against, I remember playing Leeds at home and beating them. The name ‘Leeds United’ was a big name and there was a lot of expectation form them to do well that season but we won the game. You never felt the underdog going into a game.
Ferguson is inevitably not the same manager, nor the same person he was when he first stepped into the London Road dugout 16 years ago. He remains “passionate, aggressive, motivating”, all the qualities Lewis recalls, but he has evolved too.
“When he first came in I think he was a bit naive, in terms of just playing free-flowing football,” Zakuani adds. “He’s a lot better tactically now, Peterborough are a lot more solid, it’s more of a team shape he works on now whereas before it was all-out attack and ‘let’s go out and score more than the opposition’. When I first came, results were crazy, games of 5-4, 6-1, we were just scoring goals but now I feel he has a lot more tactical knowledge, he sets out a game plan.
“In terms of his character, he’s a lot more calm and a lot more relaxed. Before he would lose it when you lose a game, he would show his emotions a lot more. Now he takes it a game at a time, probably because he’s improved so much as a manager he’s a lot more sure of himself than he was.”
Zakuani was once Ferguson’s captain and recalls the disciplinarian who, as a coach in his mid-30s at the time, was keen not to be seen as too pally with senior players.
After going on a night out hours after Peterborough had lost 2-1 to Crystal Palace, Zakuani was one of four players fined and transfer listed.
“I think that’s one of the things you respect him for,” he reflects now. “There is no favouritism, he will treat everyone equally and he thinks you should be disciplined, he will lay the law down.
And the famous Ferguson “hairdryer treatment”?
“That’s there as well, he’s got that hairdryer in the locker. There’s been a few games where at half time he has lost it and given the hairdryer treatment. I think he’s a little more relaxed now and I think times have changed a little bit and he’s moved on with the times. Before it was more acceptable, managers used to rant and rave a lot more, now he is a lot more controlled.”
That is why Peterborough once again stand on the brink of Wembley. Having pipped Derby to the final play-off spot by a single point and with Sheffield Wednesday finishing the regular season in third – a cavernous 19 points ahead of their semi-final opponents – nobody could have predicted the manner of Peterborough’s first-leg win.
“You could see Darren Moore looked shell-shocked, some of the Sheff Wed players did look shocked,” Lewis adds. “For some reason Darren and Peterborough Utd have always been a team that can go and score goals and bring that exciting brand, incredible game of football.
“You’d like to think it’s dead and buried. but Darren won’t be letting the players think that, that’s for sure.”
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