Peterborough manager Darren Ferguson and club captain Grant McCann will be doing their utmost to ensure West Ham's promotion charge suffers a further setback at London Road tonight.
The under-fire Sam Allardyce takes his team to London Road this evening in an attempt to get the Hammers' campaign for automatic promotion back on the rails after a string of disappointing draws.But Ferguson and McCann - who played for West Ham under Harry Redknapp and Glenn Roeder between 1998 and 2003 - are looking forward to heaping further misery on the current West Ham manager and his team.
"We’re at home to the biggest club in the Championship. We’re under no illusions about the size of the task," said Ferguson. "They have some great players, a top manager and the best away record in the Championship - so the task facing us is obvious.
"But we have proved that we can beat anyone in this division as long as we play to our highest standards. We showed what we can do when beating Reading [3-1] last week and there’s no doubt in my mind that we will give them a very tough game, if we play to our best.
"There is a lot of pressure on West Ham as they have to win. They are four points behind second place and this is their game in hand. They are not likely to catch Southampton at the top so they need to win this one, but my lads won’t need much motivation either."
"West Ham are big and strong. They haven’t been on the best of runs, but they are still proving very difficult to beat," added McCann, who is best remembered at West Ham for scoring an own goal in the 7-1 defeat at Blackburn in October 2001 .
"It goes without saying it’s a tough match for us, but if anyone can beat them we can. We’ve shown what we can do when we are on our game at home and if we perform like we did against Reading, we can beat West Ham.
"It’s a big game for me as an old player. I’d love to score the winner in the last minute from a free-kick. We’re all looking forward to playing West Ham and with the crowd behind us like they were last week we must have a great chance."
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