Peterborough shock Birmingham in final to retain Vertu Trophy | EFL Trophy

A relative newcomer to English football, Tom Brady would admit he has much to learn. The Vertu Trophy final rolled out a not-yet-lost tradition, a Ferguson heist at Wembley, as Darren Ferguson, in his fourth spell at Peterborough, collected the lower league trophy for the third time as manager.

If ambitions are set far higher at big-spending Birmingham, failure to collect the trophy to accompany promotion was a dark disappointment for their fans. League One’s champions were beaten by two superb Posh goals. The side with 47 fewer points, still not clear of relegation danger, became the first club to retain the trophy.

“We deserved to win,” said Ferguson, who also won the trophy as a player. “We weren’t lucky today, we fully deserved to win. Given the opposition, it has to be the best one. You could argue they’re the best team League One has ever seen.”

Peterborough have still never lost at Wembley. If Brady guided the New England Patriots to regular-season NFL London wins there, this was 90 minutes-plus of agony for his soccer club, pre-match fun long forgotten once kick-off arrived. Brady’s pre-match duties had involved serenading fans from an open-top bus and, alongside the majority owner, Tom Wagner, a TV meeting of alpha-male minds with Troy Deeney.

“Suffering is part of life, part of football, we will grow from it,” the Birmingham manager, Chris Davies, said. “All today proves is what they’ve done in the league. It will hurt for a long time but it shows the consistency we have had.”

The national stadium was dominated by second city citizens. Peterborough, despite the wide-boy charisma of their octogenarian director of football, Barry Fry, who went through agonies as full time approached, despite Ferguson being a son of football royalty, were very much in the minority. Blues could not repeat Fry’s lower-league double of 1995 when he managed them.

As the game began amid an April shower for which only Brady, in a reassuringly expensive raincoat, seemed to have planned, Davies’s team went straight for the throat, their fans urging on a quick kill of opposition beaten 2-1 on Tuesday to confirm promotion.

Jay Stansfield, the £15m man, fired wide as Birmingham sought an early breakthrough before Peterborough, despite being 16th in League One, threatened with their speed on the counter. Another fear factor: the dead-ball ability of Harley Mills. After 15 minutes, the one-time Aston Villa trainee’s left‑foot beauty clattered beyond Ryan Allsop to billow the net: Declan Rice, take note. “I fancied myself,” said a scorer who had spent the first half of this season at Enfield.

When Abraham Odoh sped through seconds later, only for Ethan Laird’s last-ditch tackle to deny the Peterborough forward, the West Midlands contingent’s previous confidence appeared to shatter. A set of fans who have lived out all sorts of disappointment began to seethe.

Birmingham’s players were as tight with tension as their fans while Peterborough flushed with confidence. Their captain, Hector Kyprianou, completed a sweeping move, cracking home after Mills’s surge down the left and Kwame Poku’s flick. That piece of true Wembley wizardry plunged the majority of the stadium into deep depression. “They were high moments of quality that were missing from our game,” Davies said. “Two worldies.”

Introducing Alfie May at half-time as Birmingham attacked towards their own fans did not bring much Blues cheer. May was booked for dissent within six minutes. Whether attacking a wall of mounting anguish was a help or hindrance was a significant question. Ferguson’s team were comfortable in playing a low block and picking off their opponents’ growing raggedness. The closest anyone came to a third goal was when Posh’s Ricky Jade-Jones burst through before being tripped by Tomaki Iwata. No video assistant referee, no foul. Technology would surely have ruled in the attacker’s favour.

With 10 minutes to play, Davies was booked for barracking Ben Speedie, the referee, from the sidelines, the occasion now getting to players and manager alike. More agony came as Stansfield poked in a rebound, before offside was correctly flagged. A lone, blue smoke bomb launched in celebration appeared symbolic of extinguished hopes, only for 11 minutes of time to further prolong agonies.

There, the outstanding Steer denied Lukas Jutkiewicz, the Birmingham seats beginning to empty. A lonesome, befuddled Davies stood shaking his head on the touchline. A last‑seconds melee after another Steer save proved the end, tempers fraying before disappointment – and relieved joy for Posh – took full hold. Ferguson said: “We have to celebrate these moments. There’s some great players who never got to play at Wembley.”