City though produced a performace that lacked hunger. Too many errors, negative attitude and the lack of a will to win.
The stats show we could have scord a hatfull, watching the game we could have scored plenty, the Northampton keeper had a blinder and I was dissapointed the sponsors gave the man of the match vote to a Cardiff player and not to Lee Harper in the Cobblers goal, but the general swagger of the team was wrong. complacency? the heat? I don't know what it was but I had the feeling all game that it was not going to be our day.
Not enough 50/50's won, big name and big salaried players not competing, that hurts to see.
Andy Legg and Leo FW worked hard, always looking for the ball, Maxwell when he came on showed more passion in 15 mins than may of the other players did for 90 mins.
If it is an attitude problem then Lennie must change their thinking, we accused Alan Cork of not being able to get the best from his players, Lennie must work hard to inject some passion in some of these lads.
Northampton took the lead with a 35 yard shot from Gabbiadini, the space he was allowed, even so far from goal, was criminal, the shot from his point of view was outstanding, it drew appluase from the whole ground but should Alexander be beaten from 35 yards????? City got back into the game, pinball in the Northampton box and the ball popped up for Kavanagh to head the equaliser.
One winner now surely, not today, Northampton broke, a first effort was blocked, a second shot from Forrester has headed up in the air by Gabbidon but as with the rest of the game it was a Northampton player who got there first and punished City, Gabbiadini, as if in slow motion, poked the ball towards goal and watched the ball squeeze just past Gabbidon and roll gently over the line off the left hand post.
City pressed after that, Earnie came on for the ineffective Campbell, Maxwell for Whalley, Prior for Barker in a bizzare move that saw Rhys Weston move to centre back with Prior and Croft go from left back to right back and Gabby from centre half to right back. Why?
But to no avail, we could have scored 5 in the last 10 mins but it was not going to happen.
A week now to lick our wounds, only Lennies second defeat as a City manager but he must learn from this. Northampton came with 5 across the park, they over ran us at times and we found it hard to do anything about it. It was a reminder to games from last season, City players have been quoted this week about how home form is important, they need to wise up or they will find it will cost us again during this campaign.
Also an increase of only 25 on last Tuesday's crowd, that was also dissapointing. City are now in 5th place with 6 points out of a possible 9.