Brady focused on the positives and not the negatives after sloppy end to vital Cambridge win

Cobblers manager Jon Brady was keen to focus on the 75 minutes of good play from his team rather than the messy way they saw the game out after Saturday’s crucial win over Cambridge United.

Northampton were comfortably the superior side for the majority of the game at Sixfields, and they broke the contest open during a rampant five-minute burst at the start of the second half when Kieron Bowie and Sam Hoskins both found the net.

The home side were seemingly cruising towards victory but they became somewhat sloppy late on and had to survive a few scares after Gassan Ahadme pulled one back with 13 minutes to play, even though Cambridge went down to 10 men following Paul Digby’s red card.

"You give Cambridge a little bit of credit,” said Brady. “There are so many variables in football. It's never perfect and it's never exactly how you want it to go.

"They kept two at the back, pushed everyone forward and really threw caution to the wind, and we didn't get out and put pressure on the ball that we needed to, but that's all learning and in the end we got the result.

"There were a lot of passages to our play today that was really positive today, and if you look back at the chances, we reduced them to very few and that's pleasing.

"The second goal is a really good goal and that's how we want to play. It would have been nice to kill the game off but they go down to 10 men and throw caution to the wind and the game didn't finish how we wanted to finish it. But it was really important to win the game and jump a few places in the table.”

Hoskins’ 10th goal of the season came at the end of a fantastic team move, which was in contrast to Bowie’s opener. The young loanee was presented with a simple finish after a huge mix-up in the Cambridge defence.

"It's a bit fortunate but Kieron earns that luck with his running and persistence,” Brady added. "He played over in Belgium and then played the full 90 on Tuesday for Scotland Uner-21s and he's done a lot of travelling by air so to put in the effort and the shift he did today, he was brilliant. He ran tirelessly and to make that chance, it was all his own work."

Brady also confirmed the reason for Jon Guthrie’s absence after the captain returned from injury in midweek, adding: "It’s just no risk with Jon at the moment. We'll manage him and see where we're at over the next few days but we're just trying to play the long game.”