Brough reveals his 'relief' after first Cobblers goal - but now he wants more

It’s an odd thing to say about a left-back playing just his 11th game for a club but Patrick Brough’s first Cobblers goal, scored against Exeter City on Saturday, was a long time coming.

The summer arrival from Barrow was not signed for his goalscoring exploits, and yet his impressive stamina and running power from left-back has earned him plenty of opportunities this season, the best of which came against Stevenage and Wigan.

Finally, at St James Park on Saturday, Brough got his goal, slotting home in stoppage-time to rubber-stamp an impressive away win.

"It's a relief,” admitted the 27-year-old. “You start getting some stick off your mates and off everyone but I was getting in the right positions and that's the main thing.

"I knew that, if I kept doing that, the law of percentages would be in my favour and one would go in. It's nice to finally get a goal and hopefully I can score a few more this season."

Brough showed tremendous endurance to go from one end to the other in stoppage-time as he finished off Kieron Bowie’s cutback at the end of a slick counter-attack.

"I thought Kiz was going to shoot to be honest, strikers being strikers, but I managed to keep up with him and get myself in a good position,” Brough added.

"He squared it for me and it was nice to see it hit the back of the net. It's well overdue! I know and I think everyone knows that I've had a few chances which I should have scored this season but to finally get off the mark and open my account feels really good – long may it continue.

"It actually went through the defender's legs in the end but I thought if I hit it on target it's bound to go in. I didn't care where it went as long as it went in the net and it was brilliant to score right in front of our supporters."

The statistics from Saturday – 11 shots to 10 in Northampton’s favour – paint the picture of a tight game at St James Park but in reality that was not the case. Whilst most of Exeter’s efforts were speculative, at least four of Northampton’s were clear-cut chances, including Sam Hoskins’ excellent opener and Brough’s late tap-in.

"It's a massively important win and it's a big confidence boost,” Brough added. “After a few losses you need to get back to winning ways and get points on the board.

"We want to get as many points on the board as quickly as we can so to go to a place like Exeter and come away with a brilliant away performance and win, it's fantastic.

"I don't think Burgey had a save to make. They're a good team and they've started the season really well so to limit them to so little is credit to us and I felt we massively deserved three points."

Cobblers have the lowest expected goals against figure in the whole of League One. Expected goals is essentially a statistic which measures the quality of chances that a team creates and concedes.

"We've looked at the stats and our expected goals against us is really low so we know we're not giving much away,” Brough continued. "We need to do more at the other end and take more of our chances, myself included, to put games away because we’ve had opportunities in most games.”