Kevin Nolan targets winning finish against Wigan before making 'tough decisions' on his squad next week

Cobblers wrap up a challenging but ultimately successful season by hosting Wigan Athletic this weekend, and then all eyes will turn to the summer and who will stay and who will go, with 16 players out of contract.

"There are decisions to make and they are tough decisions because these are people’s livelihoods,” said Nolan. “You're either telling them you want to keep them and then the ball’s in their court, or you’re telling them you’re not for us. They’re both difficult conversations.

"But that’s what I’m here to do and that’s what I’m paid to do. I’m a big boy and I’ll make decisions and I’ll stick by them and they’ll be our decisions because we want to step up next season. We don’t want to be getting to the last 10 games and looking over our shoulders.

"We want to be looking up and that’s the mentality we need. There has to be a robustness to the squad so we can go from Saturday to Tuesday to Saturday. There’s lots of things that’s got to change but first we want to finish with a win on Saturday.”

Nolan is desperate to see a reaction from his players against Wigan after again apologising to the fans for the team’s performance in defeat to Crawley last weekend.

"I apologised to the fans after the game and I apologise again because I don’t want to see a performance like that again,” Nolan added. “I thank them massively for turning out and it’ll be good to finish at home and hopefully we can finish with a good performance and more points on the board.

"We can still finish two places higher. We can finish above Peterborough and Mansfield if results go our way and that’s what we’re looking at, and if we don’t, we can still get to 53 points and that’s what I’m demanding.”