Curle knows Cobblers must up their performance levels after patchy Shrimps showing

The Cobblers led 2-0 at the break after goals from Paul Anderson and Ryan Watson, but the struggling visitors missed three good chances with goalkeeper David Cornell denying both Cole Stockton and George Tanner.

Morecambe continued to cause their hosts problems in the second-half but only had Adam Phillips' late goal to show for their efforts as Nicky Adams and Chris Lines maintained Town's ruthless streak in front of goal.

However, while the three points were most welcome, Curle accepted it wasn't a vintage performance from his side.

"I think it's pretty generic in football whereby you don't always perform how you want to perform but the result is the most important thing in our mindset," he said.

"I said that to the players in the changing room afterwards. We take the result and we earned the result by being prepared to get forward and through our clinical finishing on the day.

"But there were elements within the game that we know we can do better and that's the mindset that the players left with.

"It's the honest we have in the group because they knew without me having to speak to them that it wasn't a performance where we hit the levels we wanted to.

"But the pleasing thing is, from a coaching point of view, is that when you don't get everything right - barring the result - you accept it."

Anderson, who played under Morecambe boss Derek Adams at Plymouth last season, also felt the Shrimps, now bottom of League Two, are a better outfit than the standings suggests.

"They're not a bad team," he said. "I worked with Derek at Plymouth and he'll get them organised and get them working for each other.

"My first goal is one of those where it's gone all the way in but up until that point it was relatively even.

"That knocked the wind out of them but I think they'll be OK because they've got some good players."