Northampton Town: Midfielder Luke is left to rue yet another late Cobblers lapse
LUKE GUTTRIDGE branded Torquay’s victory over the Cobblers as little more than a ‘smash and grab.’
And the midfielder, who made a return to the starting line-up after rejoining the club 24 hours before the game at Plainmoor, believes there are plenty of reasons for those with Cobblers connections to feel confident about the team’s chances of survival.
Town remain rock bottom of the Football League but for long spells of this game they were at least the equal of a side with the best form in the division.
The unwritten press-box score cards had Aidy Boothroyd’s men in front on points at the interval and they had the best chance of the second half when Saido Berahino was expertly foiled by home stopper Bobby Olejnik, whose starting position, decision-making and ability to spread himself were all straight from the textbook. But – and there is always a but when it comes to Northampton Town these days – they were undone in the final quarter of the game. Again.
John Johnson will no doubt have been on the receiving end of whatever the Boothroyd equivalent of the hair dryer is after fatally losing Mark Ellis at a corner with 15 minutes to play.
Until that moment of grim inevitability, Town had looked good value for a point with Guttridge pulling the strings excellently in the first 45 minutes and Berahino always looking to receive the ball, turn defenders and get shots away.
A number of chances were carved out during that time, and although none of the saves Olejnik made were anything special at that point, there was enough attacking impetus for the latest recruit to the escape cause to give his own personal vote of confidence to the team’s chances of survival.
“I’m very surprised about where we are but that’s the situation we’re in,” said Guttridge, who is remembered with considerably more fondness at Torquay than the youth-team coach who decided to release him before he had a sniff of first-team action.
“We had plenty of chances, it wasn’t like we didn’t create anything, and then they went down and got a smash-and-grab goal. They nicked that one and that gave them the points, but I thought it was an encouraging performance. Time is running out so it is important that we get that first win and that’s what we’ll be looking to do against Macclesfield this weekend.”
It is no surprise to hear Guttridge, a wily campaigner from the league one days and toe-to-toe battles with Leeds and Sunderland and the like, talking with urgency about the next game on the fixture list.
He won’t have come back to Sixfields to be involved with a team hanging around the lower reaches of the Football League.
With such ambitions in mind, he says the main priority in the vital next run of games has to be to eliminate basic mistakes.
“We’ve got three massive games coming up and we can’t afford to lose any of them,” he said. “Saturday was frustrating and it was my first game so I haven’t seen everything that has happened but we had a lot of chances in that game.
“We need to start putting those chances away when we’re on top. We played some good football at times and we need to cut out the silly errors.
“It’s disappointing to see someone getting a free header five yards out with 10 minutes to go.”
There were plenty of opportunities to glimpse the old Guttridge magic on Saturday and, as you might expect of a player not yet 30, he is very much still a force to be reckoned with.
He was really ticking in the first 20 minutes, hitting first-time passes without looking to a player nobody else had spotted, the usual stuff.
After that he faded but says the rust he had accumulated between a hasty exit from Aldershot and renewal of vows in the Sixfields secretary’s office will soon be shaken off.
“I haven’t really trained much this week with what has happened at Aldershot so I’ve not been able to do much,” he said.
“I’ve been doing a lot of travelling around, I’ve been here, there and everywhere, so I haven’t had a lot of training this week.
“I felt a little bit rusty but I was happy enough.
“I’m positive about how we played, I think the only negative is that they scored from our one lapse of concentration.”
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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