Brady weighing up changes for Oxford United clash to keep Cobblers fresh

Jon Brady could make changes to his team when Cobblers visit Oxford United on Tuesday due to the need to ‘manage’ certain players.

Ben Fox played 62 minutes on his first league start of the season at the weekend while Sam Sherring, returning from two months out, managed 77 minutes before hobbling off. Shaun McWilliams and Jack Sowerby both came off the bench after also recovering from injury.

Dominic Gape could be back involved at the Kassam Stadium after he started successive games last week but was left out of the squad against Bristol Rovers. None of the other seven injured players are expected to feature, including top scorer Sam Hoskins.

"I don't think anyone else will come back in the frame for Tuesday,” said Brady. “We'll see how Sam (Sherring) goes today (Monday) and then we'll assess the situation after that.

"Dom's come in and played two 60 minutes from Saturday to Tuesday and that's a lot for his body to take because he hadn't played for a while previous to that because he was at Sutton earlier in the season.

"It's all about managing bodies and managing the load and you'll see that sometimes players might not be involved because we want to get the balance right and make sure that players are fit and strong when we get towards the end of the season.

"When we looked at this month, we knew how tough it would be with the challenges we face and the teams that we're coming up against and what we have available.”