Jon Guthrie delighted to finally make his return against Portsmouth after frustrating spell on the sidelines

Cobblers captain Jon Guthrie hopes he is now over the worst of his injury issues after making his first league appearance in two months on Saturday.

The 31-year-old centre-half re-injured his hamstring in the win over Reading at the start of October. He initially returned to play 30 minutes against MK Dons in the EFL Trophy two weeks ago but did not feature in the squad for Town’s wins over Cambridge and Blackpool before playing the second half against Portsmouth on Saturday.

"I’m feeling good,” said Guthrie. “I’ve been back training for a week or two now and obviously I got 30 minutes against MK Dons so I’ve just been building myself up to make sure I’m ready.

"We’ve been trying to plan long-term rather than short-term. It’s really frustrating because, as every player says, being injured is the worst thing about football. It’s been made easier in the last few weeks because the boys have done so well and I haven’t needed to rush back.

"But it’s still frustrating when you’re watching because you feel you can help the team, but I’m delighted to be back and get a good 45 in my legs and hopefully that’s now me done injury-wise for the season and I can kick-on from here.”

Cobblers were already 2-0 down by the time Guthrie came on against Portsmouth and he wasn’t able to halt the slide in the second half as the table-topping visitors eased to victory.

"We saw today that they are a job team and there’s a reason why they are top of the table,” Guthrie added. “There’s definitely things we could have done better but to be fair to the lads, they’ve put in a real good shift over the last few weeks.

"It was a fantastic win against Blackpool on Tuesday and I’m sure it took a lot out of the lads because we weren’t quite at the standards we expect, but we were up against a top team and we just have to learn from it and move on.

"They punished us whenever we made a mistake. You might get away with it against other teams but against the best in this league, they punish you more often than not and they certainly did that to us today.

"But we’ve won three of the last four and that’s a really good return. The boys have been brilliant going back to the Burton game and then backing it up against Cambridge and Blackpool so we’ll stay positive and the confidence is high and there’s nothing to fear going forward.”