'No excuse' for Cobblers to standstill in League One as ambitious McGeehan sets his sights high

Just surviving at this level is rightly celebrated as an achievement by long-suffering supporters who have seen their club yo-yo between divisions for decades.

But next season will be Town’s third successive year in League One and many believe this moment is an opportunity to really kick on and push towards the upper echelons of the division, certainly that’s the view of their ambitious midfielder.

"It was just very important to get the job done first of all because it's massive for this club to be in League One,” said McGeehan. "You look at the stand and stuff and it feels like the club is in a good place and heading in the right direction.

"The first thing was to get safe and we’ve done that, but the gaffer is a very ambitious young manager and he wants to push the club forward and that's what we all want as players and obviously the fans want that too.

"We're all ambitious and you've seen clubs that are a similar size to Northampton who are right up there, I’m thinking about Wycombe and teams like that who have done really well, and they should be the marker for us.

"It shows that there's no excuse not to be up there and hopefully that's what we'll look to do next season. Obviously we don’t know what the future holds and there’s a lot of players out of contract this summer but that has to be the aim.

“It's what we all dreamed of as kids – to play at the highest level and to play for a club that you're proud of. I'm proud to play here but now we want to be up at the other end of the league and pushing on.

"You’ll see teams winning promotion in the next few weeks and that's what we want a taste of. There's no reason we can't build on this and and if we can keep a good team together and bring in some new players, you never know what could happen.”

Reflecting on the win over Shrewsbury, McGeehan continued: "It was a great win and it feels nice to get the job done with a few games to go. Obviously we would have liked to have done it a bit earlier but you never know in football and we've done it now with an emphatic win in front of our own fans.

"It can be mentally difficult when you know you're going to be relegated but it does give you a bit more freedom and I think you saw that from Shrewsbury and the way they played and how they tried to get on the ball.

"But we knew we couldn't give them anything and fortunately we stuck the goals away and I thought we timed them really well and in the end it was very comfortable.”