Cobblers fitness news: Guthrie, McCarthy and O'Brien-Whitmarsh update
Conor McCarthy, Jon Guthrie and new signing Joe O’Brien-Whitmarsh should all be available for selection when Cobblers head to Crewe this weekend.
McCarthy very briefly featured in one pre-season friendly and then missed the first two games of the season due to injury, but he played 45 minutes in Tuesday’s EFL Trophy tie against Brighton Under-21s.
“It was good for Conor to play some minutes,” said manager Chris Hogg. “He’s been out for several weeks now so it’s been good to have him back on the grass in training and it was important to get him on the pitch tonight.
“He’s not actually trained for too many days so that will do him good to get 45 and he can start building himself back up.”
McCarthy replaced captain Jon Guthrie in a substitution that Hogg confirmed was pre-planned, adding: “That was planned and Jon’s all good. I was always going to make a lot of changes tonight.
“We had to make sure we managed boys through so we get them into a place where they will be fit and healthy and ready to fight and scrap in the league on Saturday.”
Meanwhile, O’Brien-Whitmarsh was not registered in time to feature against Brighton but he’s trained this week and shouldn’t need too long to get up to speed after featuring in pre-season for Southampton.
Hogg continued: “He’s had a pre-season and he trained today (Tuesday), he’ll train tomorrow and he’ll train Friday so he will be in contention for the weekend.
“We had a group of seven who missed out tonight that trained during the day. The level in the group was really high and it was a good training day and we’ll go again with those boys tomorrow, as well as a few others, and then we’ll build a programme so we arrive at Crewe ready to go.”