Peterborough United are currently sitting 23rd in the 2021/22 EFL Championship standings after the early gameweeks of this season. Their most recent game also ended in a defeat after a somewhat good performance against Bristol City, as The Robins took a 3-2 win from the Weston Homes Stadium. This was the Posh’s seventh defeat of the season, as they’ve won just two and drew two matches only. In this post, we will analyse their stats to understand the reasons behind their poor start to this campaign.
The least one can say is that the Posh have been poor in doing their defensive duties, having conceded 23 goals already in just 11 games. No other team in the Championship has conceded even 20 goals, though a couple of teams have conceded 19, including Cardiff City and Reading. Their poor defensive form has not been helped by their attack, as they have been an average team going forward, scoring 12 goals in the 11 games. They have been able to find the net in more than half of their games, but keeping a clean sheet has been a major problem, as they’ve only kept two clean sheets – one in a victory over Birmingham City and the other in a recent draw against league leaders AFC Bournemouth. 
Peterborough United have been poor in attack, but they have been worse in defence, conceding the most goals in the Championship so far. They have also contested a lot of defensive and aerial duels, but have lost a lot of those. They have won the fifth-lowest aerial duels in the league. A team that is struggling and defending a lot, should be winning many more duels in order to stop teams from scoring.
One of the major problems faced by Peterborough and their manager Darren Ferguson is that they do not have a prolific goal scorer on the team who can score goals for them regularly. Their current top scorer spot in the Championship is shared by four different players who have just two goals each. They have had the fifth-lowest xG in all of the Championship with just 10.28, which they have actually overachieved scoring 12 goals.
The above viz shows the PPDA values for all the teams in the Championship. PPDA refers to passes per defensive action, which means this stat shows the number of passes the opposition team is able to complete before the team is able to make a defensive action. The lower the PPDA value is, the better a team is at defending. Peterborough United have had a high PPDA value of 13.118, the third-highest in the Championship, showing that they have one of the poorest defences in the Championship. 
In terms of recoveries made per 90 minutes, The Posh can be seen at the second last spot. They have only had approximately 65 recoveries per 90 minutes, which is very low considering the competitiveness of the Championship. Their defence has been a big problem, with the attack also not being the greatest.
At the moment, it looks like this will be a very difficult season for the Posh, and they really need a massive turnaround in attacking as well as a defensive form if they want to have any chances of getting out of the relegation zone. They are currently second last but know very well that they would’ve been last if Derby county wouldn’t have faced the point deduction. It will be interesting to see how the season pans out for Darren Ferguson and his men in the coming weeks.
