'No coincidence' about Cobblers' opening goal against Scunthorpe

The move which led to Danny Rose's crucial opening goal against Scunthorpe United on Saturday was something the Cobblers had worked on in training ahead of the game.

Town had dominated the contest following Emmanuel Onariase's 20th-minute red card but numerous chances came and went as the clocked ticked past an hour.

Finally, though, the breakthrough arrived courtesy of Rose, who made an excellent run to stab home Sam Hoskins' drilled cross.

"It was a lovely ball in and we worked on certain movements and tactical ways to try and get in like that on Thursday and Friday," revealed manager Jon Brady afterwards.

"It wasn't a coincidence that it happened during the game because we worked on those movements and how we pull them away and how we get to the byline to get those crosses in."

Even accounting for Scunthorpe's numerical disadvantage, Town's performance on Saturday was their best of the campaign to date. They got the ball wide quickly and delivered it into the box with good quality, resulting in a hatful of chances.

Paul Lewis missed four himself, including one header against the crossbar and another scooped off the line, before Rose and Hoskins secured the win.

"The more you put balls in the box and and the more you get crosses in, the goals will come," Brady added.

"Paul Lewis hit the post and the bar but he's arriving into the box brilliantly and that's what we want from him, but it's been hard with our shape playing against a lot of back threes.

"We knew they would start with a back five and that's why they haven't conceded many. They have been strong and resilient and they have got some good results so we knew it would be a challenge for us and the challenge was to break them down."

Whilst coming up against a back three or a back five is no coincidence to Cobblers this season, Scunthorpe set up differently to previous opponents.

Brady continued: "There's always tweaks to every opposition you play and you want to exploit any weaknesses you feel the opposition have, and there were certain things we wanted to do.

"We realised it was going to be a back five for Scunthorpe and it would have been a 5-3-2, not 3-4-3, with the way they set up, so we had to find ways to get through that bank of five and how we would do it.

"In training, we did certain patterns that we wanted to produce in the game to exploit that."