Curle confident Cobblers will keep improving after 'average' start to league one season

Town suffered their first league defeat of the season on Saturday when they were beaten 2-0 at home by a Hull City side that was only relegated from the Championship at the end of July.

The Tigers are expected to be among the promotion front-runners this season, and they ran out winners thanks to two first-half goals, both of them coming from set-pieces where the Cobblers defence switched off.

Aside from that the match was pretty tight, and Curle takes huge encouragement from the fact the mistakes that led to both goals can be sorted out in time - and has great confidence his players will take on board any criticism they receive from him and his coaching staff.

"I would probably have to say, looking at the stats, it has been an average start," said Curle. "I like winning, I can handle drawing games, but I don't like losing.

"The manner we got the defeat on Saturday saw lots of areas that we can still work on.

"We did the video debrief over the weekend with the analyst and the coaches, and there were lost of good things to come out of that game.

"When you think that you are playing against a team that have got a reputation, that have got aspirations to be finishing at the top of this division, and we gave them a game.

"There are just little things that we can still tidy up on that can make it more of a contest for teams to come here.

"The competitive edge was there, there was a little bit of naivety with the two goals which was disappointing, but is again something we can work on and we can identify with the players."

Curle will have laid out where he expects improvements from his team, says it is always about striving to improve performance, no matter what level you play at, and that he knows his players will react to that.

"When we criticise the players, it is done to help them," he said.

"You can look at every performance, you can look at Liverpool's performance against Arsenal on Monday night (the Premier League champions won 3-1), and you can be sure that Jurgen Klopp will still be looking for improvement.

"And sometimes to improve players, you need to criticise them. If you have the right environment, then players will accept that and want to learn from it, because they want to improve.

"We have a changing room that has players who will listen to the criticism and use it as a benefit for their development."

The Cobblers will be looking to get back to winning ways on Saturday when they travel to Bristol Rovers (ko 3pm).