Kevin Nolan hadn't even met Kelvin Thomas in person before taking Cobblers job

After Jon Brady walked away from the club in early December, Nolan was Town’s number one candidate and he accepted the role two days before Christmas, following four and a half years as first-team coach to David Moyes at West Ham United.

Nolan managed Leyton Orient and Notts County between 2016 and 2018 before heading to West Ham, but he was always keen to return to the dugout and he had only heard good things about Northampton, and it was the words of now assistant manager Colin Calderwood that helped persuade him take the job. The two men already knew each other from their Newcastle days.

Speaking to David Prutton on the official EFL Podcast, Nolan said: “Colin, my assistant, had had a lot to do with Northampton over the years so knows them really well. I’d had lots of good chats with him about the club when I put myself forward for the job.

“Then, when I’d have been having a chat with the owners, I just got a real good feel for them. It was the Friday before Christmas and we had a chat on FaceTime, so I hadn’t met them before I took the job. But you knew about them and you knew it was very stable.

“The job was to keep them up. It’s a club that has yo-yo’ d a bit out of League One and back into League Two. What we want to do now is stabilise ourselves as a League One club.

“That’s why I thought it’s a really good opportunity for me. I really believe in my capabilities to be able to do that, and then also to sustain it and to try and make us better and climb up the league, so that we’re not in these moments at this time next season.”