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When Graeme Westley was appointed manager of Peterborough United during the week he sent an e-mail to the club’s fans promising that The Posh would make 600 passes a game, leading to 25 shots, leading to victory.

He promised to win, of course, because all new managers promise to win football matches but the dressing that Westley – a manager with some qualification around the bottom of the Leagues – used was seductive. Not only would Peterborough win but they would pass there way to victory.

And passing equated to the beautiful game. Westley’s promise would be that he would have Peterborough United remoulded as the football good guys – the Barcelona of the Nene – but one game later a man had a broken leg and even the opposition manager felt free enough of sanction that he would directly state that the tiki-taka team were throwing themselves to the floor to cheat.

What City did wrong

Phil Parkinson had a lot to complain about after the game but little new to say.

The regret that goes towards Paul Anderson – who had his leg broken by a Michael Bostwick tackle in the first half which the Peterborough midfielder can share the blame with Referee Paul Tierney. Referees should not allow bad tackles to the point where players think that diving in as Bostwick did can ever be acceptable and when they do referees should punish them.

That Anderson will miss the rest of City’s season is a function of a Referee who feels that he does not have to take the duty of care that he has to players seriously. It should be made clear to players like Bostwick that when they make tackles with aggression and without care they will be sent off. They are not so they carry on doing it.

But tackles like that are a long way from the promise of beautiful football. Westley’s brand of football is steel tackles in a silken passing glove. For the entire match they showed the aggression normally associated with kick and rush football but married it with an attempt to play a passing game.

As a plan it could work, as could Parkinson’s more practical approach, but both require a level of commitment from players which was lacking from the City squad.

Anderson’s break adds to injury problems but more troubling has been the manager’s inability to get anything like a performance regularly from either Anderson or Mark Marshall on the other wing who slumped back down after a promising game last week.

Which is not to assign all the blame to two players – lethargy was common – but rather to say that just as shaping a team last season around Mark Yeates as playmaker failed because Yeates did not perform so this season stumbles because the angles of attack which glowed last week were absent this, and they were absent for the want of effort.

Players in teams that win games make it their business that the team plays well. This quality is lacking from the current City site some of the time, not all of it, but there is no one charged with maintaining that quality in the way that a Stuart McCall did, a Gary Jones did, or an Andrew Davies did.

Parkinson is battling the entropy of average performances and today he lost that battle all of which leaves the strange case of Steve Davies.

The strange case of Steve Davies

Replacing Paul Anderson midway through the first half it seemed unlikely that the entire game would hinge on substitute Steve Davies but it was the centre forward who played right wing who was ten years on the wrong side of the winger who raced forward for the first Peterborough United goal and his lack of positional sense to play in a position which is not his own that cost much.

However it was Davies’ header which hit defender then post a few minutes early which on a day with a dash more luck would have had the balance swung towards City.

Davies’ willingness to get involved was a contrast to his team mates but when a ball came to him in the box he swiped and missed, and another was stuck under his feet as he tried to get through, and nothing much went right for him.

Indeed he was left leaving Steven Darby with too much to do at right back as Westley’s side put in a second. As much as Davies tried he could get nothing right.

But try he did, even as things did not go right for him, and one can’t help but wish the rest of the player would follow his example.

Despite the two wins which proceeded this home defeat talk about Phil Parkinson is framed in a discussion of his potential dismissal. Those who suggest he should not despite a run of no winning in a number of games found voice again when Stevenage recorded a 3-2 victory.

Parkinson had been engaged in a spot of curious pre-game mind-games by Stevenage boss Graeme Westley seemed to bemuse the City manager. At the final whistle it was hard to say if Westley’s chides at Parkinson’s way of playing – and his clear statement at how he would counteract that – had had any effect at all.

After ten minutes Westley’s publicised plan seemed pointless when James Hanson rose well to head back to Adam Reach who lashed home on the angle past Chris Day in the visitors goal. It was a great strike in a great first half by Reach who for forty five minutes was the player he could be and for the second forty five was the player he would rather not be. When Reach sets high standards he impresses and their is an onus on Phil Parkinson to make sure he stays to them.

In fact Reach lashed another shot which Day saved only to watch James Hanson put the rebound past him for City to get a second goal which restored the Bantams lead after Francois Zoko had equalised.

Zoko’s goal was troubling. Andrew Davis slipped in the build up and there was no specific point where one felt that City could have claimed the ball back but Stevenage took time to pass the ball around the penalty area and look for a hole in City’s rearguard.

Davis’ slip gave way to an injury and in his absence City looked less assured at the back. Rory McArdle is less of a player when not alongside Davis and once against the stablising influence of the City defender was missed.

Parkinson – the pragmatist – was told squarely by Westley that his game plan was obvious and that Stevenage would counter it by playing around the physical Bantams and he must have felt that the suburbanite team were attempting to play a game that they could not master.

And Westley would be right to say that Parkinson and City are easy to read. The team is based around hitting high passes to James Hanson and the players around him working hard to feed from that. Stevenage’s counter to that was to keep possession away from the middle of the field – that worked, Nathan Doyle was a ghost of a player today – and put the ball behind the full backs.

Which, as a plan, could not be said to have worked. In the second half Stevenage only once penetrated City’s backline in that way – Bira Dembele ended up heading against the bar – and would have gone home in defeat but for the dead eye of former Arsenal midfielder Luke Freeman.

City carved out a number of chances in the second half which if scored would have secured a win and probably a few players will be left with a question that at that stage had they had kept more composure or been committed to extending the lead then City would have won, but they did not and Freeman did, in a way.

In the first instance Freeman drove a ball from range past Jon McLauglin after Gary Jones had stumbled in the midfield and in the second powering home a free kick (really Mr. Sarginson? a free kick?) from the edge of the box. Both were exceptional strikes of the ball but one doubts that Westley could have planned on those executions at Friday’s training sessions.

Which leaves City with a sore feeling. Objectively the Bantams did not do enough to win the game but on other days this would have been a 2-1 win with mocking noises made towards the opposition fifteen for blasting the ball over. Not today though.

And Parkinson will regret that but as a pragmatist he will feel if it takes two remarkable strikes to beat his team then his team will win this type of game more often than not. Graeme Westley will be ecstatic in victory but his survival plan for the team he first brought to League One will have to hope that this kind of lightning strike happens again and again.

Having called the game before hand – in essence got lucky (although see this article for thoughts on luck) – but seemed to outwit the man who this time last year was taking a team out of Wembley he can use this to build belief in his squad. It would be tough.

Where City go from here seems more easy. Simple, slow, slide into a safe position in the middle of League One.