Brady: Cobblers did 'both sides of the game' in win over Reading

Cobblers boss Jon Brady felt his team showed ‘both sides’ of their game to beat Reading 3-1 at Sixfields on Tuesday evening.

Town raced out of the traps and were rewarded with a 2-0 half-time lead thanks to Sam Hoskins and Louis Appéré, who both benefitted from some questionable goalkeeping by Reading’s David Button.

The visitors fought back in the second half and threatened a comeback through Dom Bollard’s goal following another goalkeeping error, but any fears that Cobblers would throw it away were quashed when Mitch Pinnock applied the gloss in stoppage-time to secure back-to-back wins.

"I think we showed both sides of our game tonight," said Brady. "For the first 15 or 20 minutes, I felt we had them on the back foot with how we started and how we played.

"It gave us a strong foothold, especially when we got that early goal from Sam. That was really important but full respect to Reading because I think they are a high level side.

"We watched them over and over and they play with a 4-2-2-2 and their movement is excellent. We compressed them and worked so hard and in the second half we really had to dig in and show a different side to our game.

"They pushed their full-backs right on but we were a threat on the counter-attack and got that third goal at the end. We dominated the first 25 minutes and then had to weather a few storms but I'm just pleased to make it back-to-back wins because that's hugely important at this level."