Giving Cobblers the boot? Home to Northampton Tues, 28th Jan 19-45

[irie Cee Bee]

The team looks highly motivated again. Collins scoring for fun. Thomasson now playing like a relieved man. Randell with a "through ball" for Collins goal that I haven't seen made by one of our midfielders in ages. Looking forward to the rest of the season.

[BWFC_Insane]

I enjoyed it far more tonight than I have at home all season.

Defenders asked to defend, width further up the pitch, and a bit of space to play into.

Great stuff.

Yep. Exactly this. We invited them on and opened up space in behind them for Collins to exploit.

Most enjoyable game since…I can’t remember. Easily best this season.

[The_Gun]

Good result, but a poor performance. I won’t gripe too much because we’re in a period of transition. I’m sure things will pick up once the new fella has had a chance to bed in.

Poor performance? Dear me. We’ve had a season of poor performances. Today was not in any way poor. Fought like Trojans. That is how you will get out of this league. It’s a slog not some beauty contest.

We absolutely won’t get out of the league playing like that against better teams than Northampton. A win’s a win, we move on and look forward to getting a new manager in.

[Worthy4England]

Grand win and another three points and no fannying about with it. P2 W2 D0 L0 F4 A1...well done Jules and team...

[BWFC_Insane]

Good result, but a poor performance. I won’t gripe too much because we’re in a period of transition. I’m sure things will pick up once the new fella has had a chance to bed in.

Poor performance? Dear me. We’ve had a season of poor performances. Today was not in any way poor. Fought like Trojans. That is how you will get out of this league. It’s a slog not some beauty contest.

We absolutely won’t get out of the league playing like that against better teams than Northampton. A win’s a win, we move on and look forward to getting a new manager in.

This is exactly how you get out of league one. Winning games. Being organised and resilient.

Two wins in a row barely conceded a chance across the two. That’s what promotion teams do.

[KeyserSoze]

Go sports team.

We shall be shitting them again soon. Last one competitively was Solihull in the cup I think.

[jmjhb]

Good result, but a poor performance. I won’t gripe too much because we’re in a period of transition. I’m sure things will pick up once the new fella has had a chance to bed in.

Poor performance? Dear me. We’ve had a season of poor performances. Today was not in any way poor. Fought like Trojans. That is how you will get out of this league. It’s a slog not some beauty contest.

We absolutely won’t get out of the league playing like that against better teams than Northampton. A win’s a win, we move on and look forward to getting a new manager in.

Disagree. Everyone expected it to be a battle; it was, one that we won in the end.

[GhostoftheBok]

Poor performance in many ways, but won by scrapping it out.

Manager will have hated a lot of it, but he'll be proud of the effort levels.

2 wins on the bounce. Cracking. On we go.

If the new bloke can do the technical work better and keep that fight he may get us out of this division.

[Prufrock]

I imagine if you were in the ground that was fun. Relief, less fannying, home win for Jules. But on it's own that was a baaad game of football. You're not hurting anytime playing like that for a season.

That's not his job. That's to keep the show on the road and rally troops. He's doing that perfectly, but if the new gaffer was in the stands he's definitely not setting that as the template!

[Worthy4England]

As far as we know, Jules isn't going to be the new Captain of the ship, so I think brand advocates (I think we've moved on from customers and consumers as we glance at the net promoter score), can probably rest easy, shit, boring possession, because it's a buzzword, might just be a couple of days away.

I didn't notice too many folks telling us not to judge what we saw for 6 months, 1 year, 3 years, 4.5 years, because these things take time, whatever "the brand. No. Immediate "it's not thatism." We didn't even see the usual injury list posted as mitigation over a lengthy post. Just a weak that's not it...

If Jules heads out before next match, he'll have 100% win rate, including an away win at a top 6 opponent. Enough goals to have achieved that at 2 goals per game and looked genuinely stronger in a week, at the back, with our two "best" CDs not on the pitch. There were plenty of shit, boring, uninspirational wins under Brand and Evatt, we shouldn't pretend otherwise.

[BWFC_Insane]

I imagine if you were in the ground that was fun. Relief, less fannying, home win for Jules. But on it's own that was a baaad game of football. You're not hurting anytime playing like that for a season.

That's not his job. That's to keep the show on the road and rally troops. He's doing that perfectly, but if the new gaffer was in the stands he's definitely not setting that as the template!

I mean as I said at half time you could pick holes in it. The performance, last night is far more likely to see you up than what came before it. Solidity, hard to break down. Those are the minimums. And then show some quality up top. We did all those things. Could we have done some better at times? Yep. And clearly some tiredness crept in.

However for me Darby has set the template. All this modern football brand nonsense is just nonsense. League one you go up with enough quality top end of the pitch to hurt sides and a defensive structure that’s hard to break down. We had both of those last night.

[malcd1]

We had a spine back in the team last night that has been missing for 12 months.

Forrester and Johnston at the back, headed everything and threw their bodies on the line. They hardly gave Northampton a shot on goal.

Thomason and Morley ran their socks whenever we lost the ball and used it wisely when they had the chance.

Victor and Collins worked so hard up front to close down their defenders. I have never seen Collins run as much as he did and use the ball so wisely. Came deep to collect the ball and ran the channels well. Collins was my man of the match and probably the best game I have seen him play. Another fantastic goal to his collection and a great pass from Randall.

Not the game for the purist. Passed it around when we could but took no chances at the back. Lots of determination and spirit that has been missing recently.

[Abdoulaye's Twin]

Thing that stands out from last night for me is I can't remember Thommo making his usual idiotic stupid tackle. It does feel like a weight has been lifted for many of the players, though Jones really does need to stop passing to the opposition most of the time.

[Worthy4England]

We had a spine back in the team last night that has been missing for 12 months.

Forrester and Johnston at the back, headed everything and threw their bodies on the line. They hardly gave Northampton a shot on goal.

Thomason and Morley ran their socks whenever we lost the ball and used it wisely when they had the chance.

Victor and Collins worked so hard up front to close down their defenders. I have never seen Collins run as much as he did and use the ball so wisely. Came deep to collect the ball and ran the channels well. Collins was my man of the match and probably the best game I have seen him play. Another fantastic goal to his collection and a great pass from Randall.

Not the game for the purist. Passed it around when we could but took no chances at the back. Lots of determination and spirit that has been missing recently.

I think one of the things the last two games have shown me, is how far away from the notion of a functioning "spine" we've been, probably for more than a year, doubling down on Plan A. I mean, at one point yesterday, I also saw a head height cross heading towards Szabi!

[Abdoulaye's Twin]

We had a spine back in the team last night that has been missing for 12 months.

Forrester and Johnston at the back, headed everything and threw their bodies on the line. They hardly gave Northampton a shot on goal.

Thomason and Morley ran their socks whenever we lost the ball and used it wisely when they had the chance.

Victor and Collins worked so hard up front to close down their defenders. I have never seen Collins run as much as he did and use the ball so wisely. Came deep to collect the ball and ran the channels well. Collins was my man of the match and probably the best game I have seen him play. Another fantastic goal to his collection and a great pass from Randall.

Not the game for the purist. Passed it around when we could but took no chances at the back. Lots of determination and spirit that has been missing recently.

I think one of the things the last two games have shown me, is how far away from the notion of a functioning "spine" we've been, probably for more than a year, doubling down on Plan A. I mean, at one point yesterday, I also saw a head height cross heading towards Szabi!

Maybe they've been watching videos of Stelios back in the day. He scored a few with his bonce

[DJBlu]

The man is a breath of fresh air.

Summs it up perfectly.

[boltonboris]

An encouraging evening. Not sure if we were off it, or not, but I thought Northampton looked good and they'll be fine this season under Nolan. They kept the ball well in midfield.

A couple of excellent goals. First was well worked and with limited time available, it's good to see us execute a set-piece routine. Players and coaches enjoy cooking stuff like that up and they're always celebrated pretty wildly on the pitch and on the bench

The 3rd goal was proper Bolton. Breaking away at pace, a great pass through defenders for Collins who bent his run perfectly and once he cut-in there was only going to be one outcome.

[malcd1]

We had a spine back in the team last night that has been missing for 12 months.

Forrester and Johnston at the back, headed everything and threw their bodies on the line. They hardly gave Northampton a shot on goal.

Thomason and Morley ran their socks whenever we lost the ball and used it wisely when they had the chance.

Victor and Collins worked so hard up front to close down their defenders. I have never seen Collins run as much as he did and use the ball so wisely. Came deep to collect the ball and ran the channels well. Collins was my man of the match and probably the best game I have seen him play. Another fantastic goal to his collection and a great pass from Randall.

Not the game for the purist. Passed it around when we could but took no chances at the back. Lots of determination and spirit that has been missing recently.

I think one of the things the last two games have shown me, is how far away from the notion of a functioning "spine" we've been, probably for more than a year, doubling down on Plan A. I mean, at one point yesterday, I also saw a head height cross heading towards Szabi!

What was a notable difference was we did not have much width. Tutu had a bit of joy during the game with his pace and trickery but not much after taking the lead. Schon has probably been one of our most consistent players recently but he seemed to have mainly defensive duties last night. Hardly got forward.

The two subs also played as full backs and barely passed the half way line (hardly surprising when we were leading).

Made a change that we seemed capable of defending a lead.

[BWFC_Insane]

We had a spine back in the team last night that has been missing for 12 months.

Forrester and Johnston at the back, headed everything and threw their bodies on the line. They hardly gave Northampton a shot on goal.

Thomason and Morley ran their socks whenever we lost the ball and used it wisely when they had the chance.

Victor and Collins worked so hard up front to close down their defenders. I have never seen Collins run as much as he did and use the ball so wisely. Came deep to collect the ball and ran the channels well. Collins was my man of the match and probably the best game I have seen him play. Another fantastic goal to his collection and a great pass from Randall.

Not the game for the purist. Passed it around when we could but took no chances at the back. Lots of determination and spirit that has been missing recently.

I think one of the things the last two games have shown me, is how far away from the notion of a functioning "spine" we've been, probably for more than a year, doubling down on Plan A. I mean, at one point yesterday, I also saw a head height cross heading towards Szabi!

It’s been obvious for two years we had a weak spine. But I think honestly the more you look at it the more a simple structure some organization and motivation of the players makes a huge difference.

[Prufrock]

Every time he just about clings on by his fingernails to a fffffflipping, my heart soars.