Jon Brady expecting most of Cobblers' injured players to return during pre-season after 10 miss Leicester friendly

Cobblers remain hopeful that the majority of their injured players will play some part in pre-season after 10 were absent for Saturday’s opening friendly against Leicester City.

Jon Guthrie, Ben Fox, Aaron McGowan, Akin Odimayo, Ali Koiki and Jack Sowerby have all done some light training in the last couple of weeks and will be introduced at different stages in these next few friendlies, with their minutes carefully managed.

Danny Hylton, Ryan Haynes and Tyler Magloire are more long-term injuries, while Manny Monthé’s fitness is behind most others following his arrival last Friday.

"The way we have to work through this pre-season is different and we are having to put a lot of things in place to make sure we get the injured guys back at the right time,” explained Brady. “It's just working through each game.

"I think we have seven players who are working their way back to fitness and they will be involved in pre-season. Another three are injured and more long-term. Manny needs to be conditioned and get up to speed.

"We had players come in quite late last year and because of our squad size and the injuries we had, we had to throw them straight in.

"We are trying to be extra careful this pre-season because we know how long and brutal the season is and we want players for the long-term and not the short-term so we're working our way through it.

"It's a complex situation but we have to show patience and as you saw against Leicester, all of the minutes are very carefully managed and planned.”

On Shaun McWilliams, who was taken off after just 27 minutes against Leicester, Brady said: "It was a precaution with Shaun. He took a pretty bad tackle down the back of his Achilles. He felt pretty sore so he came straight off but he was walking OK and he didn't hobble off so hopefully that's a good sign.”