Major blow for Cobblers as Brough suffers 'bad injury' after playing through pain barrier

Northampton’s injury crisis at full-back has deepened further with the news that left-back Patrick Brough is out for the foreseeable future after tearing his oblique muscle.

Right-backs Aaron McGowan, Akin Odimayo and Harvey Lintott and left-back duo Brough and Ali Koiki have all been injured at various stages this season, with not one of those players available to start at Wycombe Wanderers on Saturday, although McGowan did return to the bench.

That meant manager Jon Brady, who was also without top scorer Sam Hoskins due to illness, had to start four centre-halves across the back-line at Adams Park, including Sam Sherring at right-back and Manny Monthé at left-back.

"I missed Mitch (Pinnock) last week with illness and then we miss Sam this weekend, again due to illness, and it's very frustrating because he's your top goalscorer and those are the constraints we're working under,” said Brady.

"Patrick has torn his oblique, which is quite a bad injury. He's played on through it and he's put himself on the line for club for the last month or so but he's got to the point now where he's struggling to breathe. It's got too bad for him to play.

"We don't have any full-backs available currently so we had to play four centre-halves against Wycombe. That's what we're having to put up with at the moment but we defended fine apart from those two moments.

“But that's more changes on the back-line. When we've had consistency in selection, we've picked up results. But we've copped a lot of injuries and that's been a big hindrance to us."