Guthrie says honest 'conversations' helped Cobblers turn their form around

Centre-back Jon Guthrie believes some honest 'conversations' between players and staff helped the Cobblers turn their poor form into three successive wins.

From being up in third after beating Newport County in mid-September, Town dropped all the way down to 14th with back-to-back defeats to newly-promoted duo Sutton United and Hartlepool.

That led to the players and staff getting together and discussing what was going wrong, and since then they have not looked back, beating Stevenage, Mansfield and Tranmere in succession.

"It was obviously a really good week with three wins and three clean sheets - you can't ask for much more than that," said Guthrie.

"We had a few disappointing results and after the defeats to Sutton and Hartlepool we held some big conversations between ourselves about where we were going wrong and what we could improve.

"A lot of what we discussed was just about finding that consistency because I think, with this league especially, most teams can beat any other team but the sides that find consistency will go on and have success.

"We spoke about finding the level of performances and I think we've been able to do that recently."

Whilst Cobblers were beaten 2-1 by Hartlepool, their encouraging performance at Victoria Park was enough to convince manager Jon Brady to stick with the same starting XI for the three following games.

"You never like to lose but we watched the Hartlepool game back and performance-wise, there wasn't too much wrong with it," Guthrie added.

"We didn't defend our goal well enough for their two goals but apart from that, there wasn't too much in the game and it could easily have gone either way.

"From then, we have maintained our performance level and also probably kicked on a bit and we have played better and better, particularly at Tranmere on Saturday which was probably the best we've played so far this season.

"I thought we were dominant all over and now hopefully that can continue."