Brady admits Cobblers need to find an attacking spark after disjointed performances

Cobblers boss Jon Brady has spent the past couple of days trying to find a way of injecting a spark back into his side's attacking play after admitting they have gone off the boil in the last few weeks.

Town were the top scorers in League Two until recently but they are averaging less than a goal-a-game since Christmas and laboured their way through Tuesday's 1-1 draw at struggling Harrogate.

Cobblers totalled 10 shots in North Yorkshire but nine of them were taken from outside the box, including Mitch Pinnock's deflected strike four minutes into the second-half.

"The decision-making and connections on the ball need to be better,” admitted Brady. “We’ll highlight to the players where to improve.

"You have to show them and work on it. I feel some of the play into the front line can be better and some of the movements need to be better as well.

"But you have to highlight some of the decision-making to them in a positive way and say 'these are the options you have and these are the solutions'.

"At the moment, we aren't quite doing it and the timings of our runs off the ball and our movement off the ball isn't quite right. We certainly need to highlight things like that."

What has not helped Brady is the constant chopping and changing due to injuries. He has been forced into changing his starting line-up nearly every week due to a new injury, which is in contrast to last season when he had a very settled XI.

"It has made it harder,” he added. “You look at last season and we had real consistency in terms of selection – I think most people could have picked the team week in, week out because it was much more settled.

"We haven't that option this season at all but we have just had to find a way. When you play Saturday to Tuesday, the team is changing, the shape is changing and there's only so much you can do without flooding the players’ thought process. It’s just about trying to help them.”