Brady feared Cobblers would have to 'ride through a storm'

Town were beaten 1-0 by Bristol Rovers in their first League One game of the campaign and then exited the Carabao Cup with a whimper when limping to a 2-0 defeat against Wycombe Wanderers on Tuesday.

Brady admitted he wasn't entirely surprised by how disorganised his side looked in midweek given the amount of new faces that were on show, and the fact that many of those players remain short of full match sharpness, something which hasn’t been helped by a sickness bug that’s gone round the camp.

He said: "We're still trying to get minutes into players who need it because we're trying to get them ready. The sickness bug hasn’t helped – it’s hindered us – but we have to get through that and once we come out of the other side, we’ll be stronger for it.

"The most important thing on Tuesday was to get minutes into the group and there were some good things but I knew, potentially, that we would have to ride through a bit of a storm.

"The most important thing is to build the players up and we did that on Tuesday, but there's food for thought and everything goes into the mix so we'll have a look and see for Saturday."

A couple of positives on Tuesday were the performances of Tariqe Fosu and Luke Mbete, both of whom were making their first starts for the club.

Brady added: "Tariqe came on at Bristol Rovers away and did well to set up a good chance for Sam (Hoskins) and then he played another 60 on Tuesday but again he’s only had a maximum of 45 minutes throughout the whole of pre-season.

"So again it's a case of trying to build him up as much as we can but already he’s got some important minutes under his belt. Luke Mbete did well and he’s absolutely fine, him coming off was just a precautionary measure.”