Brady confident Cobblers will 'get it right' against Oxford after Crewe 'blip'

Cobblers boss Jon Brady has full faith that his players will 'get it right' when Oxford United visit this evening after they hit a 'bump in the road' against Crewe Alexandra on Saturday.

Brady could not hide his disappointment after Town chose an untimely moment to throw in their worst performance under his leadership, slipping to a late 1-0 defeat at the PTS.

The interim manager was frustrated by the way his side veered off script and reverted back to the type of direct football played under Keith Curle.

"That was a bump in the road and there will be more bumps in the road all the way along," said Brady. "Yes, I'm disappointed and I want more and I want our supporters to know that I'm not happy with that and that's not what we have tried to implement. I don't want to play like that.

"I'll do everything I can but one thing I can't do is make decisions for the players on the pitch. We said about freeing them up but they didn't free themselves up - they needed to recognise that from me in the changing room afterwards."

Whilst the visit of play-off chasing Oxford looks a tough test for Northampton, they have tended to produce their better performances against top-half teams.

"I feel we have probably performed better against those sides in and around the play-offs and they're a team I believe we can beat," added Brady.

"Oxford will have the same thoughts and they will feel they can beat us but there are 10 games to go and we're going to try and win every one of them.

"Saturday has to be a blip. It's probably the first time since we came in that we got involved in a game like that. It wasn't pretty but I believe we can play much better than that and I expect us to play much better than that on Tuesday."

Asked why he thinks his players have appeared to struggle more in games against relegation rivals, Brady said: "It could be that the players feel they have to go and win those games against teams near the bottom instead of believing in the process and what we need to do.

"We've talked about it but we have set expectation levels for the fans and ourselves through some of our performances and those expectation levels were not there when we took over.

"We've started to turn things around and yes, we had a blip but so what? People have blips. We will get it right on Tuesday night."