Kevin Nolan was forced into making more changes to his back three against Rotherham United

Nolan has constantly tinkered with his starting trio in defence since his appointment at the end of last year, largely due to injuries, and again there were two alterations against Rotherham with Aaron McGowan and Nesta Guinness-Walker dropping to the bench, and Tyler Magloire not even in the squad.

McGowan’s partner recently gave birth, Magloire’s picked up a new ssue and Guinness-Walker has been in and out of the side for the last month due to injury, meaning first starts in a long time for TJ Eyoma and Luke Mbete.

Manchester City loanee Mbete hadn’t started any competitive game for six months while Eyoma’s last start came on February 1st, and their rustiness somewhat showed in an error-strewn display as Cobblers were easily beaten.

"We lost Tyler Magloire a couple of days ago and Aaron McGowan just recently had a baby so congratulations to him and his partner,” explained Nolan. "We were very wary of going Saturday-Tuesday-Saturday with that and there's a couple of lads we need to look after. That's why we brought Luke off because that was his first start in a long time.

"The same with a lot of the lads. We have to manage their minutes. Nesta's only just come back from an injury and going Saturday-Tuesday-Saturday might be too much. It's just about managing the squad and managing their workload. We got good news on Dara (Costelloe) because there was nothing there so we were able to put him on the bench.

"But again, he hasn't trained much this week so we have to be really careful about exposing him because we don't want to lose him for longer. All those things have to be considered because we need to manage it as a team and as staff."