The hosts shot into a two-goal lead as Jason Cummings fired in from the penalty spot 17 minutes in before Siriki Dembele hammered in from close range just two minutes later. Cummings had his third of the afternoon with nine first half minutes remaining, with Town getting their consolation goal late on in the second half with Danny Hylton flicking in Jack Stacey's effort.

Jones said: "Firstly, well done to Steve Evans' side in the first half. I thought tactically they were better than us, they outmatched us, they outworked us in the first half. They caught us on the counter attack, which they have obviously prepared for. A credit to them, I am taking nothing away from them, but there was so much that was avoidable.

"I am disappointed with the result, I am disappointed with our first half performance and I will take full responsibility. Tactically, I thought I got it wrong, I got it totally wrong today and I should have trusted what we do normally. I felt a different way we could have really caused them problems and it didn't and I accept responsibility for that. The first half performance wasn't enough.

"The first goal we feel is a foul on the edge of our half, and then they counter on us. We feel it's a foul, all other times in the game it's a foul.

"I reiterate, this isn't sour grapes or anything, we weren't good enough first half, Peterborough were excellent, they countered so, so well and they got their just desserts.

"Then we haven't defended well enough, we haven't won our headers, we haven't won the one-versus-one in our box, it's too easy. And then the third one the keeper lies down.

"As I said, I am accepting full responsibility for the tactical errors I made today, but we should have come in and been a lot closer to Peterborough, which would have given us a platform in the second half. Too many individual errors."