Hogg: We need everyone to come on the journey with us

After a torrid second half of last season, Saturday’s Carabao Cup tie at Leicester City was the first small step on the road to recovery, even if the game ended in defeat. Around 2,000 noisy Cobblers supporters got right behind their team at the King Power and they were rewarded with a good performance, before players and fans shared a nice moment at full-time.

"What's really lovely was that moment at the end and we want to build on that connection,” said Hogg. “I'm big on that because I think you can achieve a lot in football if you have real spirit and real heart. If we can bring everyone else on the journey and keep getting support like that, I think we can be successful.

"We have to build on that and we have to give the fans some football to get behind. That's the aim and that's the objective. We made a decent step in terms of the performance but we haven't gone through in a competition.

"They appreciate the effort and let's keep pushing. We don't live in a perfect world and there will be tough moments and we'll have to suffer at times but if we can stick together and drive each other, we will be in a good place."

Saturday’s game might have taken a different path had Harvey Saunders converted his big chance inside a minute, but Hogg was nonetheless pleased with the forward’s performance.

"I thought Harvey was terrific today,” he added. “He brings an energy and an enthusiasm and an intensity to us in terms of our out of possession stuff, but also some of the runs he makes. Our job is to feed him more with the football so he can have more success in front of goal.

"But I thought he was great. Our quality on regains and making that last pass needs to improve but I've said to the boys, if you keep that mindset and keep that focus and keep that belief then we'll get better week on week.

"Unfortunately the Carabao Cup now is over and all of our focus is on the next game and trying to reproduce some of the good things we did.”