Brady concerned by potential Hoskins setback but duo's return helps ease injury crisis

As has been the case on so many occasions over the last 12 months, when Cobblers get one or two players back from injury, another goes down.

That happened again against Portsmouth on Saturday when Jon Brady welcomed Ben Fox and Sam Sherring back to the bench, only for top scorer Sam Hoskins to be forced off with a hamstring injury five minutes before half-time.

Town are currently missing seven players – Aaron McGowan, Akin Odimayo, Tyler Magloire, Ali Koiki, Jack Sowerby, Shaun McWilliams and Danny Hylton – and could without losing their key man for a significant period of time.

Having lost just two of 12 before last weekend, Cobblers have now suffered successive defeats in League One and were hammered 4-1 by Pompey at Fratton Park on Saturday.

"You just have to look at the team and who I've got out at the moment,” said Brady. "Sam went down feeling his hamstring and that's really tough to take. We'll have to get that assessed and see where we are with him but we all know about the injury situation at the moment.

"It was good to have Ben and Sam back on the bench. Ben's been out for nearly all of the season and he could only come on for 15 minutes and Sam felt his ankle in the warm-up which is why we couldn't bring him on.

"Jordan Willis couldn't make it through the game so I wanted to turn to Sam and get him on but he felt his ankle and didn't feel confident enough to come on.

"Those are the constraints we're under at the moment. We knew about these problems and I felt we needed some more help (in the transfer market). We'll see how the group is over the next few days and it was positive that we got 15 minutes out of Foxy.”

Cobblers added a free agent to their squad on Saturday when midfielder Dominic Gape signed on a deal until the end of the season.

"He's a lad who's been out of contract and we've had him training with us for a couple of weeks,” Brady added. “It's been a stop-start for him in the last six months but he had a good career at Wycombe and hopefully he can support us.”