Brady so disappointed by lack of 'quality' and 'bravery' from Cobblers

Cobblers boss Jon Brady bemoaned the lack of 'quality' and 'bravery' from his players after they served up another ineffective attacking performance at Rochdale on Saturday.

Town were toothless in attack for 75 minutes against Scunthorpe in midweek before improving during the closing stages when they created and missed several chances.

But they laboured for the whole 90 at Spotland on Saturday, unable to create anything of note in succumbing to only their second defeat in 10 matches.

"When you're up at the top of the table, you need to be even better to sustain it, there's no doubt about that," said Brady, whose team remain second in League Two.

"It happens, when you travel or when you play at home, teams know where you are in the league and psychologically people do think that they need to be at the top of their game to beat us.

"But we have be even better. You can run around and you can work hard but we have a lot more quality in our team than what we showed today. We didn't test their goalkeeper anywhere near enough. It wasn't good offensively."

Whilst some managers may have held a long post-match debrief in the changing room after such a defeat, Brady appeared for his press duties within 15 minutes of full-time.

"I did speak to the players," he added. "My mood is calm because I think the players are more disappointed with themselves as much as anything.

"I said I wanted two minutes with them and I had two minutes with them. They have given themselves a hell of an opportunity to achieve something this season and many people probably didn't expect us to be where we are right now.

"But when you are there, you have to show fight but you also have to show the bravery and the quality to step in at the right times and to play at the right times.

"There are certain things we didn't do on Saturday. We have to be braver and we have to be better."