Opposition view: Clough not happy despite big win over Cobblers

Will Evans scored after just five minutes at the One Call Stadium but Clough was disappointed by his side’s failure to kick on and put the game to bed before half-time, with Cameron McGeehan almost equalising late in the first half.

The hosts did ease to victory in the second period though as Evans grabbed his second before Lucas Akins’ brace condemned Cobblers to yet another defeat.

"The points are great, the performance not so much,” said Clough. “We got our reward for our work over the last few weeks where we’ve had some very good performances but only drawn games. We’ve played much better than that this season and lost.

"That’s how football goes sometimes. It was a brilliant point at Bradford on Tuesday and we got off to a great start today but we didn’t take advantage of it and that’s happened a couple of times this season. We should have gone and got another one but we didn’t have the conviction to do that.

"We stepped it up a bit in the second half and scored some good goals but we should be doing it from the start and that’s disappointing after we rested players in the week. The result was better than the performance. It was a bit half hearted and a bit lethargic and you have to make teams pay because they had a good spell before half-time and that’s the danger.

"The changes at half-time were enforced and the message was to play better than we did in the first 45 minutes. Stop messing around and go and win the game, which eventually we did, and we should have scored more goals. We shouldn’t have conceded either.”