Rival clubs offered players 'three times more' than Cobblers in January
Kelvin Thomas says the club remain open to external investment as they try and keep pace with their big-spending rivals after admitting this season’s January transfer window was ‘particularly tough’.
Cobblers entered January in need of more firepower at the top end of the pitch but they arguably ended the window in a weaker position having lost influential loanee Ethan Wheatley, who was recalled by Manchester United and sent back out to Bradford City.
Then-manager Kevin Nolan revealed that Town missed out on two strikers in January and they then suffered more disappointment on deadline day. The only attacking player to come in before the window closed was 17-year-old Leicester City loanee Jake Evans.
"January is always notoriously difficult,” said Thomas. “We spoke to players and we were in positions where we were offering an amount of money but other clubs were offering three times more. That comes down to our financial position and where we are.
"When you lose football matches, everything is wrong and there's not enough investment etc etc. You accept those criticisms but we've always set our stall out to be as sustainable as we can be.
"I was at the EFL workshop in Miami and a lot of conversation was around the finances of football and the salary inflation that's happened over the last three years. There's been an 88 per cent increase in that time so it was always going to be challenging.
"There's a wider conversation about the club and potential investment but January was particularly tough because there's a lot of clubs in this league spending a lot of money to try and get out of the league and that impacted everyone throughout the division.”
Thomas has confirmed that the club will appoint a new full-time manager at the end of the season, leaving Colin Calderwood in charge until then.
He added: "There's seven games to go and I've spoken to Colin and we're going to give it our all to get as many points as we can, but we also deal with reality and we have to think in different ways.
"We have to look at the medium to longer term with this decision and we've taken more of a patience route in a similar way we did with Jon Brady when he first came in. It took us a while to reach that decision but it proved to be a good decision.”