The North End boss says there can be no better game to bounce back to defeat against Swindon then a home game with a fellow promotion hopeful.
The gaffer spoke to the press ahead of the visit of one of his predecessors in the Deepdale hot seat and feels that the fixture is a good one for his side to face after losing to a second half penalty at the County Ground at the weekend.
“I don’t think there’s any better game to look to bounce back with than Peterborough at home,” he said. “They were one of the promotion favourites when we started pre-season, so it is a good game to look to get back to winning ways again. It is a tough game and they will be in the same boat, looking to bounce back from defeat to Rotherham at the weekend.
“They play some good attractive football and they can be a real threat with the quality that they have in the squad. They spent a lot of money on certain players and it gives them a good chance to bounce back and we will have to play at the best of our capabilities to win the game.
“In the first half down there they were better than us, but we changed things around at half-time and deserved to get something out of the game. We are a different squad now to when we played them down there and we haven’t lost too many games and we want to keep going and finish the next eight games very strongly.
It will be Darren Ferguson’s first return to the Club where he managed for a year in the early noughties and he is someone Simon has a lot of respect for: “I know Darren well, we did our coaching courses together and Darren’s a passionate manager who will be desperate to Peterborough back in the Championship,” he continued.
“Everyone is fighting for the points and we are all going to be desperate to make sure we don’t let the season peter out.
“I’m sure Darren will be telling them if they don’t perform, then there will be no Wembley appearance for them [with the JPT Final versus Chesterfield this Sunday].
“They will be desperate for the points to cement their place in the Play-Offs, but also to make sure they make the team for the Final; that’s the motivation for the individuals and we have to be wary of that.”
A triple change 15 minutes into the second half at Swindon brought more purpose to the Lilywhites at the weekend, but the manager says there will not be wholesale changes to the side for the visit of the Posh.
“With a quick turnaround of games everyone is in contention; we won’t make too many changes – it doesn’t need a radical overhaul as we are not in a bad place, we just need to keep the consistency going.
“We have a couple of knocks and might need to make a couple of changes and we might want to freshen one or two things up, but for large parts the squad will be pretty much the same, pushing to try and get a result and look to try and get six points from the two home games we have this week,” he added.