Deflated Hasselbaink says 'players cried in the dressing room' after Charlton defeat

NOT GOOD ENOUGH: Cobblers have not won at Sixfields for six games now. Picture by Kirsty Edmonds

It's now eight games without a win for the relegation-bound Cobblers who were 2-0 down with just 20 minutes gone against Charlton as Ben Reeves' header and Toriqe Fosu' fine finish put the visitors in command.

Fosu had his second shortly after the restart and Northampton's woes were compounded by a late header from Josh Magennis, wrapping up yet another comprehensive defeat for Hasselbaink's team who remain third from bottom and on course for relegation to League Two.

He said afterwards: "It was the first goal that did for us. We started well and that was what we wanted but we get the goal against from a cross and the smallest man on the pitch heads the ball.

"That's just not allowed because we were playing with three centre-halves. Everybody who knows me knows that we work a lot on those kind of things and that's not really happened to us in the past.

"That was disappointing and then Charlton grew in confidence and they're a dangerous side. We stopped pressurising them in numbers, in blocks and they picked us off.

"With the position we're in, the confidence goes. You try to make a fight of it and you try to do something different to give the players some help but this is a hard one for me to take, really hard because we put a lot of preparation into the game.

"I knew it was going to be a difficult match but I thought we would be a lot closer to them. I had boys in the dressing room crying afterwards so they do care, they really care."

The Cobblers visibly lost confidence once Reeves had headed Charlton in front just 14 minutes into the game as they stepped off their visitors and allowed them far too much space to play in.

"That's not what we wanted to do because we wanted to make it a tight game," added Hasselbaink. "We know they have players who can carry the ball and who can dribble.

"They can make you a bit silly at times so we had to be closer to the them. That's what we did at the start but we didn't after the 1-0 and that's us at the moment - we need to snap out of it."