Brady lauds superb team display but warns Cobblers their work is 'nowhere near' finished

Cobblers boss Jon Brady admits his side still have plenty of work left ahead of them to get out of trouble despite hailing a superb team performance in victory over Portsmouth on Saturday.

Town ran riot in a spectacular first-half at the PTS Academy Stadium as Ryan Watson's brace in double-quick time was added to by Fraser Horsfall and Sam Hoskins, handing the hosts a 4-0 lead at half-time.

Ellis Harrison's controversial late spot-kick pulled one goal back but Town's victory never looked in any danger as they moved out of the relegation zone for the first time since January.

Watson was once again the star with two goals, making it six in his last five games and seven for the season, but Brady felt the whole team deserved huge credit.

He said: "I'm very pleased Ryan is getting the returns he deserves but I don't want to single out any individual because I think the best thing about these last two performances is that all 11 players have performed in the moment and in the game for two games in a row.

"Consistency is the key to success and when you have all 11 at it, and not one weak link in there, and when you're on form and on fire, the opposition haven't got a chance.

"With our boys, it's about building that belief and that's another platform for us to build on to move forward and keep taking steps forward, that's all we need to do."

Asked what the message was at half-time with his side four goals to the good, Brady added: "It was about resetting - it's 0-0. There were a few technical and tactical issues which we felt needed to be cleaned up and we knew they would come at us hard in the second-half.

"You saw that and we had to weather a few storms but in doing so, we were able to counter-attack and in the end we had more shots than them. You think about the efforts they had second-half, it was only really a soft penalty - Jonathan Mitchell wasn't even tested."

The victory completed back-to-back wins for the first time all season but with things tight at the bottom, Town are by no means out of the woods.

"It might be important psychologically to be out of the bottom four but we're nowhere near out of the danger zone yet," Brady admitted. "We felt the performances were better but we weren't getting the rewards in terms of points.

"We need to be top of that bottom league, basically, and we need to keep working and keep taking steps forward and having small goals in front of us. We'll keep looking to achieve those goals and that's what we're doing as a group."