Nolan hoping to welcome back more 'familiar faces' as Cobblers face tough Huddersfield test
Cobblers could have some more ‘familiar faces’ in the squad to face Huddersfield Town on Saturday.
Kevin Nolan was in the rare position of being able to name a whole bench containing senior players against Bolton Wanderers in midweek and he could have an even bigger pool of players to pick from this weekend with Tyler Roberts and Ben Fox close to returning.
Nolan said: "I don’t know if we’ll have more back but we’ve got a lot more training with us on a daily basis, which is really good. We’re doing the right things in terms of making sure they are slowly integrating so they don’t get re-injuries.
"We want to work them when they need to be worked. We trained with 20 today (Thursday) and 19 of those were senior members of the squad. Mikey’s doing great work behind the scenes with the physio department and the strength and conditioning work and the fitness coaches.
"We’re all working together in tandem and hopefully we’ll see a lot more familiar faces on the bench on Saturday.”
Huddersfield have lost ground on the top two after back-to-back defeats to Birmingham and Bolton, but tomorrow still represent a tough challenge for Cobblers.
"They are a very good side and Michael (Duff) has done a good job since he’s gone in there,” Nolan added. “They’ve spent a lot of money so they’ll be expecting to be there or thereabouts and looking to get up this season.
"It’s a good test for our lads to go up against a team who have done it consistently and it’s a good test for me to go up against very good manager. They’ve lost their last couple and hopefully it’ll be another loss come 5pm on Saturday, but what I want is another good performance and another step up from Saturday and Tuesday. If we do that, I believe we’ll get a positive result.”
The teams below Cobblers have all picked up wins in recent weeks but that is of no interest to Nolan, who added: "We can only control the controllables. That’s it. I won’t be looking at any table until we’re safe. We’re looking up and that’s how I am and have always been. I can only control what goes on in this building and our focus is on trying to catch the teams above us.”