We make our second away trip of the season down past the M6/A14 to Northampton. The Sixfields stadium has been their home since 1994 and has made it more recently into the news as the home of Coventry City who will be playing their last few games there before moving back to the Ricoh by September this year. Interesting and not useful facts: Famous Northampton people include Graeme Swann, Nanette Newman and Toby Anstis. The first car chase in Britain involving the police occurred in Northampton in 1899. Northampton have had a mixed but positive start to the season with a home win against Mansfield, beating Wolves away 3-2 in the cup, drawing to York and losing to Portsmouth. Team wise midfielder D'Arth has scored two against Wolves with others on one goal, midfielder Morris has dislocated a knee so is out for the season, midfielder Darren Carter is also injured so Joel Byrom has come in on loan from Preston. Shrewsbury don't have many concerns, Ellis is still out. Mellon will have a welcome selection headache after the entertaining win on Tuesday. Mangan is second to top scorer in the league with Collins just behind him, a welcome change. Does MM continue with Mangan and JLAA up front, will there be any other changes to the squad. Is Grandison due a start at Right Back or did Gayle do enough to hold his place. I think Lawrence needs to be starting in CM, and being as he was handed the captains armband I will assume he will, however he could sharpen up slightly and game time will give him that. Who will partner him? maybe Woods will get this one if MM is squad rotating. Any way, prediction? 2-1 to town with Lawrence and Mangan scoring.
I am going to this one and looking forward to another enjoyable win against Northampton (two great games I remember 7-2 and 3-2 to us).I predict we will have too much firepower for them. I would stick with the same defence apart from Grandison for Gayle but would play a front three with Collins and Mangan central with Akpro on the left and Clark back in midfield with Lawrwence and Wesolowski. 3-0 to Town with goals from all three front men though I would not be surprised to see Goldson score again now he is off the mark given the quality of Lawrence's delivery from corners.
An ultimately frustrating end to a game where we were superb at times. The sending off looked a trifle harsh but someone with Lawrence's experience should know better than to retaliate. We seemed to play better with 10 men but Collins coming on was the real difference. Clearly a Man Of the Match performance with superb hold-up play, clever runs and a coolly taken goal - he is far too good to start the game on the bench. Akpro and Clark were also tireless and a threat we were well on top when we went in front. There were some laughable corner decisions and a ridiculous booking for our goalie though several late thuggish tackles by Northampton went unpunished. I thought we started timewasting (by not crossing from corners etc ) about ten minutes too early and got caught with a rather soft goal after looking all over the winners. After four league games we know we are a force in this league - if we can develop a little bit of ruthlessness in closing games out we should be promotion contenders.
Just back also. According to MM the sending off was the only decision Deadly Darren (we all know him) got right. The linesman guessing a corner (shades of Wycombe) was laughable. Couldn't believe how close we came to scoring before we did with Clark hitting the bar from distance. Akpa Akpro and Collins were always a threat but Goldson (my MoM) was outstanding as a leader and defender.
Thanks for the reports of the match. Didn't hear much as we had a birtday going on and I did the washing up so I could listen!
