Jimmy's all smiles after clinical Cobblers bounce back in style

SMILING: Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink watches from the touchline as his team beat Wimbledon to record their fourth win in six games. Picture by Sharon Lucey

Matt Grimes blasted Northampton ahead with a confident seventh-minute penalty before Deji Oshilaja left the game finely-poised when heading home Lyle Taylor's corner 90 seconds after the restart.

But it was all one-way traffic after that as Town went through the gears and surged away from their hosts thanks to goals from Matt Crooks and Daniel Powell, which were enough for a fourth win in six games and only a fourth away win of the season.

The visitors did have to weather a late Wimbledon storm but the full-time whistle confirmed victory and it was the perfect way to bounce back from last week's home defeat to second-bottom Rochdale, as acknowledged by Hasselbaink afterwards.

"There was a big difference from last week," said the Town boss. "We attacked really well and this is not an easy place to come but we deserved everything we got today and we were the better team, especially in the first-half.

"We could have scored more goals before half-time but I thought we looked sharp, we played well and we found the extra man in the right areas and then when we did that, we looked dangerous and it was really pleasant to see.

"The commitment of the boys was really, really good and they were ready for whatever came their way so it was a very good overall performance."

All three goals were well-taken as Grimes emphatically dispatched his early penalty before Crooks swept O'Toole's cutback into the bottom corner and then Powell curled a delightful low finish in off the far post, though there was no first goal for striker Kevin van Veen who was making his first Cobblers start.

John-Joe O'Toole was involved in all three goals

"Kevin was OK in patches but I don't want to only talk about him today because I think Brendan (Moloney) came in and he did ever so well in the right-back position and Ash (Taylor) led the back four really well so as a team we played well across the pitch and you have to applaud everybody.

"The finishing today was very good and well-taken and it's nice to see different names score the goals other than strikers. Of course we want our strikers to score lots of goals but sometimes, when it's tight, you want other people to come up with a goal and today we did.

"They took them really well and the wife will be happy because there'll be a few more smiles!"