Eppiah 'feels better than ever' after returning to Cobblers from Leicester City

Josh Eppiah has told manager Jon Brady that he feels ‘better than ever’ following his return to the Cobblers on a season-long loan from Leicester City.

The only downside to Eppiah’s excellent loan spell at Sixfields over the second half of last season were his injury issues which limited his game-time to nine starts and six substitute appearances.

A recurrence of an old problem then disrupted his pre-season preparations and delayed his return to Northampton, however he is now back fit and, according to Brady, feels in tip-top shape, although he is unlikely to be heavily involved for another couple of weeks.

"Josh will work with Michael Bolger, our physio, and he will have to build his conditioning for match minutes and that will build up over the next few weeks,” explained Brady.

"He has been doing a lot of strengthening work back at his parent club but it will take time with Josh because we just need to see how he reacts to that over the next month.

"Hopefully we can build his minutes and once we can do that and he feels good about himself, he will be ready to go. He told me that he feels better than ever at the moment, which is great.”

Brady admitted he would have preferred to re-sign Eppiah much earlier in the window but that was out of the club’s control.

"We knew from the outset where we were with Josh and it was about him getting back to fitness,” he added. "Obviously we would have wanted him here from the start of pre-season but we knew that would not be the case. To get him now and have him as ours is the most important thing and he is in our control.

"We have a fantastic physio here with Michael and he works really well with Josh. Michael knows what Josh needs and Josh knows what he needs and we are all helping Josh to build his minutes.”