Brady tells Cobblers to have more belief and patience on the ball after blunt display at Doncaster

Cobblers boss Jon Brady says his players need to have more belief and patience when in possession after firing a blank at Doncaster Rovers on Saturday.

Town's output in the final third has improved tenfold under Brady in recent weeks with more than a third of their total number of goals this season coming in the last seven games.

But Cobblers have managed just three shots on target across their last two games at Charlton and Doncaster and Brady believes he knows the reason why. He now has a rare full week to work with his players.

"Now we've got a bit of a breather with a week off we can start to work on our play on the ball in terms of when to build, when to maintain and when to penetrate," explained Brady.

"Those are the things we need to get sorted but the effort and the application from all 11 players, plus the subs that came on, was absolutely first-class.

"We've got players who need to believe in themselves more with the quality they have. Sometimes I think we try to force the pass too much instead of recognising that the game is about numbers. You can check back out and look after the ball because we don't have to go for it every time.

"We've now got the boys into a position of scoring more goals than they had been previously but now they want to go and score every time and there's a fine line between when to retain and when not to.

"When they have an overload defensively, we need to realise 'hold on, let's have a breather on the ball and let's look after it' and then you can wait and be more patient and find the spaces, but it's only through eagerness and it's something we will work on this week."