The Midweek Review 03/10/07

It’s been a busy week away from Sixfields as the Cobblers claimed a disappointing return of one point from the two away days at Tranmere and Millwall. The home game with Port Vale now takes on more importance as we look to get back on track after losing our unbeaten run.

This week has shown the real difference between being at a game and listening in on the radio commentary. Tranmere was as agonising a second half I’ve ever had to put my ears to and was part of the reason why I made the decision to go to Millwall on Tuesday night. Despite the dreadfulness of it all it was still a good feeling to be back and a part of the action again.

We once again let a two goal lead slip at Tranmere and that’s now twice it’s happened in a matter of weeks. It must be a major worry for Stuart Gray that we keep letting leads slip and the more it happens the more wary we’ll be when we’re in front in the future. We’ll almost certainly be in the same position again some time this season and we must install some sort of discipline in the side to prevent three points turning into one.

I only wish that a two goal lead was causing problems last night but Millwall never looked like surrendering their advantage as a lack of real warm-up and loss of two key players played a big part in the performance. But while we can point out the defensive slips that cost us the goal being down to players being out of position, there’s no excuse for not testing the keeper at the other end when given a chance. We seemed almost unwilling to shoot at times, trying to walk the ball in and playing short corners that ended up back in our defence in a very frustrating evening in South Bermondsey.

Colin Larkin showed some flair late on when he was moved up front and made a nuisance of himself by having the nerve to actually make Rob Douglas work and he’ll surely get his chance up top when Mr Hubertz is suspended at Luton. Another option would be Henderson who I thought did well when brought on in the latter stages at The Den.

So attention now turns to Port Vale at home on Saturday afternoon and we need to bounce back with victory pretty quickly or some of the more fickle Town fans will begin their moanings again. We shouldn’t be worried at the moment about our bottom half of the table position, as much as we shouldn’t have been getting too excited about our 11th place last week. It’s a tight league at the moment and hopefully when things start to even out we’ll have built a points gap between ourselves and the bottom four big enough to be comfortable with.

Up The Cobblers!