Curle feels he was 'sacked too soon' by Cobblers ahead of Sixfields return

'I earned them a lot of money, got them promoted and in my opinion I got sacked too soon.'
Keith Curle and Nicky Adams will both return to Sixfields tonight.Keith Curle and Nicky Adams will both return to Sixfields tonight.
Keith Curle and Nicky Adams will both return to Sixfields tonight.

Keith Curle believes he was 'sacked too soon' by the Cobblers ahead of his first return to Sixfields as Oldham Athletic manager this evening.

Curle replaced Dean Austin in the Northampton dugout in October 2018 and within two years guided the club to promotion, thrashing Exeter City 4-0 in the play-off final at Wembley.

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But things went awry in League One the following season and Curle was removed from his position with the team in the relegation zone and on a seven-game winless run at the start of February.

He took over at crisis club Oldham the following month and now returns to Sixfields for the first time since his sacking, bringing with him winger Nicky Adams, a two-time promotion winner at Northampton.

“I’ve got some good friends down there,” Curle said to the Oldham Times. “You don’t get many friends in football but there are some good people work within that football club.

“I can be proud to say I can look everyone in the eye when I go down there because I know where they were when I first went there.

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“They had an embarrassingly high playing budget that massively got reduced - thousands per week got taken off that.

“I earned them a lot of money, got them promoted, and in my opinion I got sacked too soon.

“But it is what it is and you deal with it. I’ve got nothing to prove because I can’t play. If I can go on the pitch that might be different.

“All you ask for is the club that you’re at you want the players to be representative of the passion, desire, hunger, willingness that you’ve got and you want that to be evident when you go back to a club that you served and got promoted.”