Cobblers made full use of a rare break in their hectic schedule

Cobblers boss Keith Curle took advantage of a rare break in the busy football calendar by putting in some hard yards with his players on the training field.

Town's packed schedule eased somewhat following their goalless draw with Sunderland last weekend, giving Curle 10 days to work with his squad away from the cameras ahead of another busy run over the coming months.

The visit of MK Dons this evening is the first of 12 games before the end of February, including seven Tuesday fixtures in the space of 10 weeks.

"It's been an opportunity to revisit some of the fundamentals on the coaching field and the time has been well spent," said Curle.

"The players who haven't been playing as much have topped up their training and it was a chance to get some good physical work into them.

"Any time spent on the training ground is vitally important and it's given us a chance to revisit our fundamentals in possession and out of possession and we've used the time to reinforce the things that we need to improve on.

"You don't normally get time to work on things at this time of year but we have made use of it."

Town also had Boxing Day off after Ipswich Town suffered with COVID, but given his side took four points from two games after that, Curle might have wished to keep playing.

He added: "Fortunately we knew before the day that the Boxing Day game would be off so that gave us a chance to plan and then we took four points from the two games after that.

"You want to carry on playing games when results are going your way and you want the next game but we know we'll have some more challenging times this season and we have a group that will stand up and accept those challenges.

"Sometimes we might not be exactly where we want to be but the attitude from the changing room towards those challenges is pleasing."