Cobblers are 'broken' and players are suffering from 'fear' on the pitch

One win in 19, seven defeats in eight and four straight losses – the numbers do not make for pretty reading in whichever direction you look. The lack of confidence and belief in the team was clear for all to see during Saturday’s dismal showing at Mansfield.

"We have to use self-respect as the guideline in terms of where we go from here,” said Calderwood. “There's lots of fear in the players at the minute because they can't imagine themselves having a good game. It's psychological.

"We're going to have to grind, and it will be a grind, and that has to come from within so it's an internal thing that we have to do as individuals and as a group, but you have to compete and you have to show you are much, much better than what we showed on Saturday.

"There were one or two nice moments with the ball against Mansfield but not enough. I've been here (Field Mill) a lot of time and I've had a few disappointments on this ground but the manner of this defeat goes beyond all of them.

"We were second in all the contests and Mansfield had the intention and appetite for them for a period in the first half. They were winning too many and that makes it very hard. We’re very flat right now and we’re broken but we have to try and put the pieces back together.”

Kyle Edwards, recently back from injury, came on as a substitute against Mansfield and he insists the players still believe they can survive.

"There is that belief,” he said. “We came together as a group to talk about what we need to do and the break now gives another chance to get together and get ourselves going.

"If we could put our finger on what’s going wrong then we’d have done that a long time ago. We’ve had changes in the group and changes in the management and all these things can play a part. All we can do is try our best between now and the end of the season.”