Brady keeping his fingers crossed that Cobblers' injuries will clear up soon

Jon Brady was keeping his cards close to his chest when asked for an update on Cobblers’ growing injury problems.

Six players missed last weekend’s win over Barrow and most of those are likely to be absent again when Town visit Walsall on Saturday.

Aaron McGowan and Ben Fox are definitely out while Danny Hylton and Akin Odimayo are nursing knocks. Josh Eppiah could be involved for the first time this weekend and Jonny Maxted should return from illness. Otherwise, Brady was giving little away.

"It's just about timing,” he said. “It's taking a little while on a few of them and I don't really want to pinpoint 'he could be back then, another player could be back later' because it's hard to do that at the moment.

"We are taking it day by day, hour by hour to see where the boys are and we are hoping we can have one or two back but it is what it is at the moment and we just have to keep fighting and keep scrapping away.

"We are picking up points when we don't have anywhere near a full strength squad and that's really positive, but we do hope to get some of those injury players back very soon."

If the injury situation does not clear up, Cobblers will again be forced to name a young bench against Walsall. That does not faze Brady though after he included five teenagers among the substitutes for the League Two fixture with Barrow.

"We are not frightened to give our young players a go,” he added. “Max Dyche and Harvey Lintott came on at the weekend and closed the game out really well and they both had some important interventions in the game.

"That was really good for us and Max is another homegrown player and Harvey is a player who another club in our division let go. He's done exceptionally well.

"To have a lot of young talent around the place is adding a load of energy to the group which is really good.”