Posh were the highest-ranked team in the country in action during this international weekend and they did not disappoint with a smooth success over struggling Vale.

The London Road triumph was illuminated by two spectacular goals which started and finished their march to a fifth league win of the campaign.

The club's latest non-league gem Marcus Maddison broke the deadlock in glorious fashion with a dipping volley from the edge of the box on the half-hour mark.

And they clinched the points with two goals in the space of seven second-half minutes as top scorer Kyle Vassell's fifth of the season was followed by a beauty from captain Jack Payne.

Ferguson said: "Myself and the chairman were determined to strip down the squad and go with young players this season.

"The club is in a good place at the moment on the whole and the lads are doing very well on the pitch.

"It was a very good performance against Vale. The energy, tempo and quality of our goals were all outstanding. The only criticism of the performance is that we gave Vale a goal late on.

"We have a real team ethic here. You can have all the ability in the world, but players have to work hard and have the ability to win games.

"We have also responded well to a defeat on each occasion and that is another key skill. We're unlucky not to have won all six league games and I'm delighted with the players."

A late Vale consolation from Jordan Slew somewhat blotted Posh's copybook and they had to be thankful to defender Christian Burgess to deny him a second in stoppage time.

Vale boss Micky Adams was determined to take positives from a fourth successive defeat.

He said: "For long periods of the game the crowd was quiet and that showed we were doing our job well.

"Unfortunately our defending left a lot to be desired on occasions and ended up costing us dear.

"Peterborough have top players and you need to be on your toes against them for the full 90 minutes.

"There were positives to take, but we're disappointed with the result. I'm certainly not deflated, though.

"That's four defeats on the bounce in all competitions and we clearly need to scrape a result from somewhere, but I remain upbeat that we can have a good season.

"We are working hard to get things right and, as people will have seen in this game, we had our moments.

"Jordan scoring goals can only help. It was great to see get off the mark and we need to make sure we get him fit and firing again."