Willis hopeful he's over his injury troubles after 'frustrating' first half of the season

Town’s centre-half started the first three league fixtures of the season but only featured in two games since prior to Tuesday’s EFL Trophy tie against Peterborough United, the last of which was over two months ago.

However, having come through 25 minutes unscathed as Cobblers were swatted aside by their rivals, Willis is hopeful that the worst is behind him.

"I'm all good and it's just nice to be back because it's been a frustrating season for me so far,” admitted the 30-year-old.

"I played the first two or three games and then came back after a bit of time out but I wasn't quite right so I spent more time trying to get fit.

"But I managed to get through the game on Tuesday and hopefully I can stay fit for the rest of the season. The knee problem I had has cleared up but it’ll be a case of easing myself back in.

"I didn't manage to play any minutes against Rotherham so I think that's why I came on against Peterborough and to get 25, 30 minutes, I'm happy with that and hopefully I can gradually build on that and get back to playing full 90s.”

A lot has changed since Willis last played – not least the manager – but his main priority right now is to stay fit and become a regular again, regardless of who’s in the dugout.

"I'm just focused on getting back playing and slowly increasing my minutes and earning a place in the team again,” he added.

"I have to fight for my spot in the starting XI first and foremost and that's the main objective for myself and nothing changes because of the manager.

"Sammo's taken over and everyone has full faith in him so we'll keep training hard and playing hard and try and move ourselves up the table.”

After starting his interim spell with a fine win over Peterborough, Ian Sampson has since suffered back-to-back 3-0 defeats, including on Tuesday when 10-man Cobblers were totally outplayed by their rivals.

"It was a tough night,” conceded Willis. “Unfortunately we went down to 10 men and it's an uphill battle from there.

"I don't think you can fault the effort, everyone is giving their all, but with the quality Peterborough have got, it was going to be difficult with 10 men and obviously we weren't able to come out on top.

"But now we have the Christmas period coming up and it's a really important period in the season – your position in the table can change quite drastically.

"We'll rest up, recover and get ready for Saturday. Hopefully, when we get to the end of the Christmas period, we'll look at the table and be in a better position.

"We did dip into the bottom four for a week but I don't think we're far off. There might be a few tweaks and we'll keep putting in the hard work and I'm sure we'll get to where we want to be.”