Next up in our ‘In Focus’ series is Peterborough United, who will be playing Championship football next season for the first time in almost a decade.
2020/21 season
The Posh went into the campaign as one of the strong favourites to make it out of League One, after finishing just outside of the Play-Offs in the season before.
Despite the loss of Ivan Toney to Brentford, goals never proved a problem for the Cambridgeshire side, with the main source being Toney’s replacement Jonson Clarke-Harris, who scored 33 times in all competitions.
Throughout the course of the campaign they were on the right side of some hammerings, with a 7-0 victory over Accrington Stanley just one of many routs.
Peterborough first moved into the Play-Off positions on just the fifth matchday of the season and they remained in the top six for the rest of the campaign, with a top two spot then being occupied from February onwards.
Star man
Unsurprisingly it was the aforementioned Clarke-Harris who swept up the trophies at the end of season awards.
With 31 league goals, and 33 in all competitions, he was very much their talisman at the top end of the pitch, and as a result he was voted as the club’s Player of the Year by both supporters and his team-mates.
This upcoming season will not be his first playing in the Championship, having already made 57 appearances in the second tier with Rotherham United, scoring nine goals in that period.
The gaffer
Former PNE boss Darren Ferguson has certainly cracked the promotion formula during his time with the Posh, having achieved four promotions with the club over three separate spells.
His time at North End came in between his first two tenures at London Road, but he didn’t last a full year at Deepdale after 13 wins in his 49 games in charge.
He quickly returned to Peterborough and immediately won them promotion, and after then moving to Doncaster for three years, the son of Sir Alex returned to Peterborough in January 2019.
Recent clashes
PNE haven't faced Peterborough since January 2016 in an FA Cup third round tie, when the Lilywhites were on the losing side in a 2-0 defeat.
North End did come out on top in the three meetings prior, though, including two victories in the 2014/15 promotion-winning campaign.
The other of those three games was a 3-1 win in 2014, a game which proved to be particularly special as a young Alan Browne made his debut.
We've got just one more edition of our 'In Focus' series on its way later today, with Fulham the last team to preview ahead of the release of our 2021/22 fixtures.