No time for Posh to dwell on Trophy exit - Williams

Peterborough United must put the disappointment of their Vertu Trophy exit behind them quickly with a busy schedule ahead, boss Luke Williams has said.

Posh won the competition at Wembley in the past two seasons under Williams' predecessor Darren Ferguson, who was sacked in October.

But their hopes of a third successive triumph in the competition came to an end at the last 32 stage as Ollie Clarke's late goal gave Swindon Town a 1-0 win.

"We're very upset to go out of this competition," Williams told BBC Radio Cambridgeshire.

"We finished both halves quite strong and on the front foot but if you don't take your chances, you're always vulnerable, aren't you?

"Overall the performance wasn't terrible at all. The players worked hard, there was an intensity about our play, we just lacked quality in the final third."

• Luke Williams: 'We lacked a finishing touch'

Williams made five changes for the game at the County Ground, with winger Declan Frith making his first start since August.

They could not, though, find a way through the Swindon defence and have now lost three games in a row, scoring only once, since beating Stockport County 3-0 in League One on 20 November.

"Some players have accumulated a lot of minutes and some we have to be careful with because their schedule is very heavy at the moment, but we went strong because we take the competition very seriously and wanted to win," said Williams.

"You can't win games if you don't score goals, and if you don't score a lot of goals you can't be comfortable in games, so we absolutely need to try and hit the back of the net more frequently again."

Peterborough are at home to Barnsley in the FA Cup second round on Saturday, before returning to league action away to Reading next Tuesday.

"We've got so much football in front of us, we have to pick ourselves up and don't have time to dwell on that (defeat)," Williams added.