Guttridge: Northampton Town have achieved nothing yet

Town will play Bradford City at the national stadium next Saturday after back-to-back 1-0 wins over Cheltenham in the semi-finals, the second of which was secured through a goal-of-the-season contender from Guttridge.

League one football is the prize at stake and until that has been secured, the midfielder says the mood among the squad will be one of underachievement.

“It just feels like a mini extension to the season,” he said.

“It doesn’t really feel like the melee of play-offs like perhaps it might to other clubs.

“For other teams it might be a massive achievement but for us we’re disappointed not to have been promoted automatically.

“It is a job only half-done. It will be brilliant for the club to go to Wembley.

“Hopefully we can take a lot of fans and Bradford can too and that there will be a massive crowd there.

“But the ultimate goal of the season from the very first day of pre-season training was to get promoted to league one.”

But Guttridge, who was signed in January of last year as one of the players charged with keeping the club in the Football League, accepts a huge amount of progress has been made from the dark days of last season, when the club flirted strongly with non-league football.

“All we’ve done so far is get to Wembley, we haven’t actually done anything,” he said.

“It’s a massive achievement in terms of where the club has been in the past couple of seasons.

“I’ve said for a long time that Northampton shouldn’t be down where they have been but talk is cheap.

“It’s no good talking about it, you’ve got to do it on the pitch and we know it’s going to be a very difficult game against a good Bradford side in the final now.”