Brady outlines where Cobblers must improve and reveals how many more signings are likely

Winning more games from losing positions and increasing their goal output from open play are the two areas that Cobblers will most look to improve when the new Sky Bet League Two season gets underway, according to manager Jon Brady.

Town were the most productive team from set-pieces in the whole of League Two last season, scoring 26 goals, but they struggled to be quite so effective in open play. They also did not win any of the 12 games in which they conceded the first goal, losing 10 of them.

"We were only four points away from winning the league last year but there are still things we can do better and obviously one of those is to score more goals from open play, which was highlighted last year,” Brady told the Cobblers Show on BBC Radio Northampton.

"When we are down in games, we need to show character and resilience so we can come back and at least get a draw, and in games we are drawing, can we go and turn them into wins? We didn't do that enough last season.

"Those are certainly some things we have highlighted. We obviously don't want to concede early and if you look at the stats from last season, we were in the lead for more minutes than any other team in the league by a country mile.

"We scored the first goal a lot and I would take that all day long but if we do go behind, we need to come back more than we did last season. That's one of the things we have pinpointed and looked at.”

Brady felt he lacked game-changing options off the bench last season and has looked to rectify that in the transfer market this summer, especially following the reintroduction of five substitutions in each match.

He added: "More depth on the bench and more firepower will help with that and having more players who can make a difference and effect the game in the final third.

"We hope we will get a squad completed where we can really impact games and if are 1-0 down in a game, we are able to make a change that will impact the game and with five subs, you can do that. I feel depth is going to be very important and it's been a conscious effort to make sure we have that depth.

"If we can stay injury-free, with the squad we have, we will have strength-in-depth on the bench.”

Brady’s work in the transfer market is not yet done though and with another month until the window shuts, he is still looking to strengthen to ensure he has the necessary strength-in-depth.

"We feel we are very close to our end goal of completing the squad,” he continued. “There could be one, potentially two, more additions but we will see.

"Everything we do is kept in-house. We are working on a couple of things but I'm not going to give anything away. We will see what happens in the next week or so but I will reserve judgement on everything we have done so far until we knit them together on the pitch because that's really important.

"It's our job as staff to get the best out of the group and find the best shape and system and that will be a work-in-progress over the next month or so.”