County’s prospects of automatic promotion are likely now gone, as they are still one point from securing a play-off spot. After ending a four-game winning streak, they fell to fifth place and are now six points behind the top two with three games remaining.
“It’s only the context of the season that makes this a disappointing result,” Challinor said. “Peterborough are a very good team. They are free-scoring, they usually challenge for the play-offs and they have just beaten Birmingham City at Wembley. But as I told the players if this was the start of the season we would have seen a point here as a good one.
“We knew how they would play, but we didn’t get our press right in the first-half. We left them too many spaces and if you that against a team with so much pace and quality they will hurt you. You have to expect they would create chances at home as they are so positive, but their goal was down to us. It was a culmination of errors on our part.
To have a chance of defeating them, we needed to be at our peak, but we weren’t. We were not very good during the game. Although we weren’t at our best in the first half, we have a wonderful tradition of playing till the very end and never losing. Because we were chasing, we took the chance of starting the second half early, but we also played more aggressively to keep them trapped back and ultimately earned our point.
“A point here is not the worst thing, and we have no divine right to defeat any team in the division. When we still have everything to play for, we accept it and go on to the next match.
