The next six days in the season of Northampton Town Football Club are the biggest of the season, perhaps the biggest in many a year. The fact that we don’t play a Tuesday night fixture heightens the importance. There’s no cramped period between games, a full week to plan for one massive game and a proper week long build up for Gary Johnson to get his men in the correct mind frame and to wipe away any doubt.
Anyone thinking that this season is a write off is sadly wrong. No, we won’t make the playoffs but what we are involved in is a relegation battle, make no bones about it. Johnson has said that this fact “won’t be swept under the carpet” and that’s an understatement. It’s not something that we can laugh off as something that will never happen with the players we have, it’s not something we’re too big for, it’s a genuine threat that could ruin us.
With the wages surely high for even this division for the likes of Shaun Harrad and Johnson himself, relegation would be an utter disaster and something that the players need to wake up to, particularly with so many of them out of contract in the summer.
Assuming that both Hereford and Burton make good use of their games in hand, that leaves us looking in even more trouble. This weekend, Barnet host Morecambe and something has to give there but you wouldn’t put it past home advantage working for Barnet in that one, especially against relegation rivals. We then still have to go to Burton, Stockport and Morecambe scrambling for the points needed to survive.
What the Cobblers need to do is ensure they prepare, mentally and physically, for their own game at Valley Parade on Saturday. A day out of team bonding or something similar wouldn’t go amiss in my opinion to get them away from the daily grind, not as a reward but as an exercise in rebuilding the spirit that saw us beat Liverpool a few days before our last meeting with the Bantams.
Whatever happens this week it will go a long way to deciding how far towards the edge of our seats we are come the final day of the season at Morecambe. I’d take mid table obscurity over this any day!
3 comments:
I really can't see you guys being in the reckoning. You should pull enoguh results out the bag, like ourselves though, it's been a campaign of very mixed emotions.
I guess Anfield seems a lifetime away now?
It certainly does!!
I think we'll have enough but there's a niggling doubt and I was very confident of surviving when we ended up being relegated from League One. Going into the final game there we were two places and two points above the drop zone and still ended up going!
It's frustrating as we have decent players, as do you, that on paper should be nowhere near the bottom.
Time to include grafters rather than fancy dans in the side I think!
get the firemen in,
it's the only way
Pete Hendridge
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