And that means we're in for another dissapointing run of games before we pick up again in the New Year. To find the last time we even won on Boxing Day you have to go back to 1996 where we beat Millwall 2-0 at The Den. Previous Boxing Day defeats include a 5-0 hammering at home by Rotherham and multiple losses to Barnet. All pretty dismal stuff really.

Looking back at the stats actually could mean some good news for us. The team we are playing this year on Boxing Day is Millwall although this year it will be at London Road instead of their place. Of course this really means nothing, a lot changes in 12 years even though we find ourselves in the same league as we both were back then.



This Saturday we played Leicester, now we were confident we could change our usual Christmas form this year on the back of a 16 game unbeaten streak, even if we were heading to one of the toughest teams in the league in front of our biggest league crowd in many years. Unfortunately we folded like a pack of cards in what ended up as Fergie Jnr's biggest ever defeat in management.

I was worried whether we would even make it to the game. At Stamford station we were told the last two trains through to Leicester had been so full that they hadn't let anyone on at Stamford, ticket or no ticket. This turned out to be little more than scaremongering as the train had plenty of room for the 30 or so people who got on, even if we were all standing. At the station we were met with about 20 police, unsurprising as both Leicester City and Leicester Tigers were playing at home at the same time with the stadiums just 5 minutes from each other.



We actually started the game pretty brightly, we did most of the attacking in the first 5 minutes winning a few corners in the process. That all ended with a moment of madness from Craig Morgan. Under no pressure whatsoever when a cross comes in, he takes a mad stab at the ball and ends up deflecting it past the helpless Joe Lewis. It takes the wind out of our sails so early in the game that we were always going to struggle against a quality side like Leicester. The second goal was a bit contentious, while we were attacking George Boyd was slide tackled from behind where the Leicester player appeared to get none of the ball at all, this happened pretty much in front of the ref who waved play on, Leicester broke away and put the ball in the back of the net.

We tried a bit to fight back, hitting the post then the bar and then putting it over the open goal in the process, but our ball retention was very poor in the midfield, and defending wasn't helped by having our best defender ineligible until January, a right back at left back and a central midfielder at right back. Our fans had been in good voice despite the performance, no surprise as we sold out our 3,000 ticket allocation to help Leicester to their highest attendence of the season, higher than 9 Championship and 2 Premiership matches that day. It seemed that Leicester's third goal in the 70th minute was the final straw for a lot of fans though. About 1,000 of them got up with 20 minutes still to play and left the ground.



As you can see in the picture above, Leicester were relying on their sumo sized drummer to get their fans going and it worked well, albeit only in that section, the rest of the crowd were pretty much silent. A bit dissapointing with almost 24,000 people in the stadium. As soon as the fourth goal went in about another 1,000 Posh fans got up to go, it was almost the end of the game by then though and there was no chance of us coming back. Those who stayed applauded the team off the pitch, a show of recognition that even though we lost, we're still at the right end of the table even after just getting promotion and just to thank the team for everything they have achieved so far.

Next Game Attending

Posh v Millwall
26/12/08 12pm
London Road

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