Boothroyd pays tribute to supporters as Cobblers move into play-off places

And the manager placed on record his and the players’ debt of gratitude to the group of supporters who cleared the Sixfields pitch of snow on the morning of the 1-0 win over Burton Albion.

Town ran out 1-0 winners over the Brewers thanks to Adebayo Akinfenwa’s 15th goal of the season, leapfrogging their opponents in sixth place in the league table.

With only two other games, at Wycombe and York, going ahead on a weather-hit schedule, Boothroyd believes the mental advantage could now be with his club.

“We’ve been doing well lately but nine out of our 11 players at Chesterfield last week didn’t perform,” he said.

“So we knew we had to improve and we also knew that with hardly anyone else playing that we could give ourselves a nice psychological boost.

“We did that and we’ve still got a game in hand on some teams, so we’re in a good position.”

And he added: “The fact that our supporters were here at half past seven on the morning of the game put us under a little bit more pressure actually but they did their bit and we did our bit.

“We really appreciated their efforts and the players did too, I was asked by them to pass on their thanks, and after that it was a case of us doing our job.

“Burton and ourselves are very evenly matched, we have almost identical home records and almost identical away records and they were going to take some breaking down but I thought we got what we deserved and were worth our win.

“They had a game plan and are a good team. We knew we were going to have to keep some good players quiet and I thought we did that.

“We were mentally alert and we had to grind out the win, which we did.”