Bantams boss Hughes felt Bradford struggled to cope with the physicality of 'powerful' Cobblers

Bradford City boss Mark Hughes was disappointed by his team’s inability to cope with Northampton’s ‘power’ and ‘physicality’ during Saturday’s humbling home defeat at Valley Parade.

The Bantams edged a very tight opening half-hour but once Mitch Pinnock pounced on a defensive error to fire Town ahead, there was only going to be one winner. Shaun McWilliams added a swift second before Sam Sherring headed in a third on the hour.

Cobblers scored three and could easily have had five or six such was the ease with which they pulled their hosts apart on the counter-attack. Time and again they worked clear openings with McWilliams, Pinnock, Kieron Bowie and Ben Fox all missing good chances to score more goals.

“We had the setback when we conceded the error that lead to the opener, and that was compounded by a second immediately afterwards,” said Hughes.

“We were 2-0 down and scratching our heads trying to understand how that happened given how well we started but that was the reality and we found it very, very difficult against a good team in fairness.

“Northampton are a strong, physical team with a lot of strength and power and they caused us a lot of problems, and I felt there were too many occasions where we needed to be stronger in one-on-one battles.

"A number of times they came out with the ball when it was a physical challenge, certainly on the halfway line things developed too easily for them, and we have to be better in those one-v-one situations because that would nip things in the bud.

"We need to have that physicality to knock people over, not cynically, and in the way the game is refereed they won’t be fouls, but it would stop play and we can regroup, but we are not confident in that part of the game.

"You can’t just go gung-ho and too many times we overcommitted in the middle of the pitch. It was a real poor display in terms of losing our shape and our reaction when things go against us. We have to be more confident physically and that has shown today. We need to improve.”