Hogg explains full-time scenes after going over to Cobblers fans at end of York defeat
Chris Hogg, Jon Guthrie and James Maxwell have all accepted that supporters were justified in voicing their frustration after Saturday’s 4-0 defeat at York City.
Over 400 Northampton fans made the trip north for the first round tie and they were not shy in venting their unhappiness at the team’s performance, booing both at half-time and full-time.
There were also a number of angry supporters who made their feelings clear when Hogg and his players went over to them at the end of the game. Hogg himself stood near the away end and watched for a minute or so as fans expressed their frustration.
“I’m a supporter of a club myself so I understand that frustration,” said Hogg. “I go over and I stand and stare and it’s not to antagonise, it’s to take it all in and breathe it all in. You have to take the rough with the smooth in this life.
“You’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t with football supporters in general, not just Northampton supporters. If you don’t go over and clap, you get stick. If you do go over, you get stick, and rightly so.
“For me, it’s about respect, and I’ll always go over and clap them, win, lose or draw, good performance or bad performance, because there’s good people in there who have paid good money to support the club. We’ve not given them a performance to be proud of and that’s on us and that’s on me and we have to improve.”
Captain Guthrie said: "It's obviously not nice but we can't argue with the treatment we got, they have every right to behave that way and it's fully deserved.
“It's tough because you want to go over and show your support but in moments like that you can tell we're sort of angering them. It's a difficult balance but we want to show our appreciation.
“No player likes to be booed off or hear some of the things they were shouting at us but we understand their frustration and we can't have any complaints.”
Maxwell added: “You have 90 minutes on the pitch to do your talking. If we can’t deal with 400 upset supporters, then that’s a concern because we’ll need to do it in front of bigger crowds. Supporters just want to see us perform on the pitch. If we win 4-0 and don’t go over, they wouldn’t care.”