Diamond confident Cobblers will get Sixfields form back on track

Central defender Zander Diamond is confident the Cobblers can get back on track on home soil when they entertain Bury at Sixfields on Saturday (3pm).
Cobblers central defender Zander DiamondCobblers central defender Zander Diamond
Cobblers central defender Zander Diamond

Town go into the clash with the Shakers on the back of two straight home defeats in Sky Bet League One at the hands of Bristol Rovers and Millwall, those setbacks coming in quick succession after a run of almost 10 months without a home loss in the league.

The Cobblers were impressive 4-2 winners at Shrewsbury Town last weekend, a victory that ended a mini blip of five matches without a win, and Diamond wants to take the positivity from that performance into this weekend.

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“It is important in any game of football that you win, whether it is home or away, or whether you have records,” said the Scotsman.

“We have been beaten twice at home in a number of weeks, but positivity is what we want.

“We now need to take what we did at Shrewsbury and take that into training this week and then on to the field on Saturday.

“We are confident. We never get beyond ourselves and never look ahead other than to focus on the next opponent, which is Bury.”

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The struggling Shakers suffered a sixth straight defeat at home to Bolton Wanderers on Monday night, but thanks to a strong start to the season they are still 11th in the table, and Diamond is taking no notice of their current struggles.

“In this league anybody is capable of beating anybody and we are not going to look at that (Bury’s record),” said the 31-year-old.

“We are just going to look at ourselves and what we can do and what we can influence. If we go about our business in the right manner then hopefully it will be a positive result for us come 5pm on Saturday.”

A pleasing thing for the Cobblers last Saturday was their defending of set-pieces, with Shrewsbury’s goals both coming from the penalty spot and via the right boot of former Town striker Ivan Toney.

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There had been criticism of the Town defending from corners and free-kicks in recent matches, particularly after the 3-0 derby defeat at Peterborough United, and Diamond said: “You are given a task at set-pieces, but we don’t want to dwell on what has gone before.

“We got a positive result on Saturday and we go into the next one. We have that out of our system and it is about being positive.

“If you dwell on things you become negative, and we want to be positive and hopefully in the next few weeks we can get back up the league.”