It took only six minutes of Peterborough‘s win-or-bust final game of the regular League One season at Barnsley for Jonson Clarke-Harris to register his 26th goal of the campaign and propel his side into the play-off positions.
Clarke-Harris’ finish was typically clinical, a half-volley on the stretch after expertly teeing himself up with a cushioned first touch on his chest. It was a significant goal for Posh in their quest for promotion, moving them above Derby County and into 6th place where they remained after the final whistle, and a momentous one for Clarke-Harris too, earning him a share of the division’s Golden Boot alongside Ipswich Town’s Conor Chaplin.
Producing Golden Boot winners has become something of a speciality at Peterborough. In their past 10 seasons in English football‘s third tier stretching back to 2010-11 – they have also spent three seasons in the Championship in that time – they have provided the division’s top scorer five times: Craig Mackail-Smith (in 2010-11), Jack Marriott (2017-18), Ivan Toney (2019-20) and Clarke-Harris (2020-21 and 22-23).
And on nine occasions over the last 16 seasons, Peterborough’s top scorer has struck at least 26 goals in all competitions, with Aaron McLean and Britt Assombalonga the others to reach that mark. Dwight Gayle, who prior to Toney was Peterborough’s record sale and most notable export, managed 13 in the Championship in his only season.
As “Mr Peterborough” himself Barry Fry acknowledges to i, Posh are “a selling club”. If a striker performs well at London Road, they will invariably move on sooner rather than later. Losing a 25-30 goal a season striker should weaken a club, but Peterborough’s sustained success in the transfer market means that if anything, it has strengthened them, becoming an integral part of their business model and a USP to prospective targets.
In 2020, they sold Toney to Brentford for a club-record £10m and replaced him with Clarke-Harris, who has gone on to score 73 goals and counting over the past three seasons since joining for £1.2m from Bristol Rovers.
“If you give Jonson Clarke-Harris service he will score, as his goal record proves,” Fry tells i. “We normally play with two wingers who cross the ball and anything that’s in the box he will finish. He’s unbelievable. I think his stats are even better than Ivan’s but he’s a different type of player. His best asset is being on the end of crosses and he just has this knack of converting most of the chances he gets.”
Clarke-Harris is the latest goalscorer to pass through Peterborough’s prolific production line, which is quite possibly the envy of every other club in the Football League.
“Between [the chairman] Darragh MacAnthony and I and the managers, mostly Darren Ferguson, we’ve spotted talent, signed them and made absolute fortunes,” Fry says. “We get players to come to us because we tell them we’ll put them in the shop window. As long as they’re willing to listen and learn and improve, we won’t stand in their way.”
Unsurprisingly, given his seamless adaptation to the Premier League and England debut earlier this year, Toney is regarded by Fry as the “best of the lot”.
“I begged people to take him. I recommended him to David Sullivan at West Ham and said ‘David, you’ve got to buy this boy,’ but he wouldn’t pay £10m. I believe a year later he bid £25m for him when he was at Brentford and they told him no chance. I don’t think Brentford would sell him now unless they got £70-80m personally.”
But there have been numerous others who have earned Peterborough a handsome profit, carved out impressive careers higher up the pyramid, and in some cases, won international caps.
“Before Ivan, we had Britt Assombalonga who we sold for £8m to Nottingham Forest,” Fry adds. “We bought Dwight Gayle for £500,000 from Dagenham and Redbridge and got £7.5m back for him, £6m from Crystal Palace and more in add-ons. We sold Jack Marriott to Derby for £5m. Previous to that we sold Craig Mackail-Smith to Brighton for £3.5m. Aaron McLean and George Boyd both went to Hull for £2m plus. Conor Washington we sold to QPR for £3m.
“We’ve also sold 15, 16, 17-year-olds out of our academy for half a million with millions to come in add-ons so it’s not only the first-team, it’s throughout the club we’ve got an eye for a centre forward. We’ve been very fortunate and backed our judgement and long may it continue.”
Peterborough’s track record with forwards is particularly noteworthy, but that is not the only position in which they have unearthed and nurtured gifted prospects. Ronnie Edwards, a 20-year-old centre-back, joined from Barnet in 2020 and will represent England at the U20 World Cup in Argentina this summer. “We’ve turned down bids for him but expect him to go,” concedes Fry.
Clarke-Harris may well move on too when the transfer market re-opens. Considering he’ll turn 29 before the start of next season, the direct route to the Premier League may have reached a dead end, but it seems likely that he will be playing in the Championship at the very least when 2023-24 begins, with or without Peterborough.
“We’ve already got our eyes on a replacement for Clarke-Harris because we turned down bids in January so we obviously think clubs will come back especially since he’s finished Golden Boot winner,” Fry admits. “It’s not just a case of agreeing to sell somebody, you have to have someone in your mind to replace them and that’s what we do well.”
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