On 28 February, Northampton drew 1-1 at home to Peterborough to end a run of three straight losses. At the time they were in the bottom four, but only a couple of points from the team in twentieth place, but the end to their losing run did not save manager Kevin Nolan from the sack and Colin Calderwood, who had been manager of the Cobblers around twenty years ago and has a couple of promotions on his managerial CV, took over as interim manager.
Eight games later and Calderwood is still there, but, with all eight matches played since Nolan’s sacking lost, Northampton will have been down for a fortnight and are four points adrift at the bottom of the table by the time they face us tomorrow.
On the face of it then, sacking Nolan has not worked, but it’s not as straightforward as that. After losing to us at Sixfields on 22 November, Northampton were in seventeenth position, four points above the bottom four, but since then their record reads;
P. 27 W 3 D 6 L 18
More damningly, since Boxing Day, they’ve won just once in twenty one matches with only five of them being drawn.
So, the bigger picture says that really, when Calderwood took over a month and more after the January transfer window closed, the only chance he had was if he could improve about half of his squad as players in a very short period of time with that improvement able to be sustained over a period of at least two months – that’s a talent only the very best in his profession possess.
I don’t watch such podcasts religiously, but I often do catch those which predict the score in the weekend’s upcoming League One fixtures and someone has City winning by 5-0 tomorrow which I’m fairly sure is the biggest predicted winning margin on such a video all season.
I’m not knocking City here, because they had little left to play for on Wednesday and so there was always going to be some sort of drop of from what has become their norm over the course of this season. However, if they go into tomorrow’s game with the same level of intensity as they had against Port Vale, then Northampton could end their losing run at what they would consider to be an unlikely venue.
Whatever the outcome, it’s already clear that, while we’ve not been infallible this season at home, we’ve been on a different planet compared to what had become the norm at Cardiff City Stadium in recent years. The recent dry spell of three goals scored in five games has damaged our record to some extent, but if we were to get that 5-0 win tomorrow, it would mean that we’d finish up with fifty goals scored at Cardiff City Stadium in our twenty three league games.
Anyway, on to the quiz which has seven Northampton related questions, the answers to which will be posted on here on Sunday.
60s. A cursory look at this Scot’s Wikipedia page tells the fairly mundane story of a typical lower league journeyman with the huge majority of bis four hundred plus Football League appearances coming in the lower divisions, but dig a little deeper and you find he was, in fact, a unique footballer! Starting in the First Division as back up to someone who achieved legendary status in an FA Cup Final, he played in Kent and Hampshire before earning a move back to the top flight when Wolves paid what was a club record fee for the selling club at the time for his services. He only got to play the one game in Division One though before returning to the lower leagues to play first for Northampton and then in the capital for the team he played most matches for and the one where his career was ended in freakish, unique, circumstances. Besides that though, he was quite badly injured once after being hit on his knee by a stone thrown by someone in the crowd and, on another occasion, he found what turned out to be a fake hand grenade in the goalmouth he was defending! Can you name the player concerned?
70s. Another scot, this small, nippy forward with a surname which even his mother would say flattered him somewhat, had a so, so record with Northampton in his first period with them when he was a squad member of the outfit which climbed from Division Four to One in the sixties. He really found his feet after moving south to a club which, very unusually for that time, had moved into a newly built ground in the fifties. He became a prolific scorer at his new club and had more than a hundred league goals for them before returning to Northampton after five years. Initially, his goals continued to come at a good rate, but, as they began to dry up, he dropped back, first into midfield and then, interestingly because he was only five foot seven, to central defence. Who am I describing?
80s. During one season in this decade, Northampton had two players who shared a surname which, while being fairly common was hardly a Jones, Smith etc. One of the players concerned was a former shinty player who had played for City and the other one had begun his career at a club much in the news this week, making his first appearance for them at just 16, can you name the two players concerned?
90s. Midfielder who sounds like an unusual alliance between the Antichrist and an Apostle.
00s. No AI masts at Northampton. (3,6)
10s. Currently involved in the race for a Championship Play Off place, in his one full season with Northampton, he scored the quickest goal ever seen at the Sixfields Stadium (twenty one seconds) and received three of six red cards he’s been given in his career – he’s also been booked 111 times, who is he?
20s. The Last Dance meets Different Strokes?
Answers to follow:
