Defensive discipline of Cobblers pleases boss Curle

Cobblers boss Keith Curle was pleased with the defensive 'discipline' of his players after their 0-0 draw with MK Dons.

The visitors finished with over 70 per cent of the ball but created very little with it against the organised and well-drilled hosts, whose goalkeeper Jonathan Mitchell didn't have a serious save to make across the 90 minutes.

Whilst Cobblers were largely happy to sit back and soak up pressure, they did occasionally threaten at the other end and would have won it had Fraser Horsfall's header dropped an inch lower instead of hitting the crossbar late on.

"I think it was a disciplined performance," said Curle. "They know how they want to play and we needed to be disciplined against them.

"We've only really had one day of coaching to implement the defensive shape but I think it's credit to the players and testament to them in terms of how they took onboard the information.

"They got their rewards by nullifying them to one shot on target which came in the first-half. We stopped them getting behind us and we stopped them putting crosses into our box and I thought we frustrated them.

"We broke on them very well in the first-half but we didn't have that little bit of magic and that bit of quality to find the final pass, but we take the positive out of it because it was a disciplined performance that was needed.

"If you go ragged and if you go chasing the ball in the wrong areas, they will pick you off."