Brady admits dressing room fell 'flat' when seeing other results after Ipswich victory

Jon Brady admitted his players felt 'flat' when they returned to the dressing room and saw how their relegation rivals had fared following Tuesday's 3-0 victory over Ipswich Town.

Northampton started the night four points adrift of safety and would have hoped to make up at least some ground thanks to an excellent win at the expense of Paul Cooks' play-off chasers.

But it was not to be as AFC Wimbledon and Wigan Athletic also both won to remain five and four points clear respectively, while there were further wins for Swindon and Rochdale.

"I'll be honest, you finish the game on Tuesday, you come in afterwards and you see the results and it does hurt," admitted Brady.

"We were all very positive in the build up to Ipswich, we won the game and then we came in to debrief the players and speak to them afterwards and you felt they were flat.

"But again, you have to pick yourself up and go again and what we have to do is focus on ourselves and what we can do at the weekend.

"If we get the win and if results go favourably, we could only be one point behind and then the pressure will really ramp up on other teams.

"It's out of our hands. People will probably think we're down but we showed the other day that there is a lot of fight in the camp."

Saturday's trip to Gillingham is crunch time for the Cobblers. A win could bring them right back into the mix, but a defeat would officially relegated them if it's coupled with wins for Wimbledon and Wigan, though Brady hasn't given that any thought.

"It hasn't come into my mind one bit, I haven't thought about it," he said. "My complete focus is to win the game on Saturday.

"All we can control is our performance. At the end of the day, if that's not good enough, then we will hold our hands up. But all we can do is go out and be as positive as we can and build on Tuesday night."