Dave Challinor criticises Stockport players after Northampton defeat

Posted Sunday, September 25, 2022 by PA

Stockport manager Dave Challinor was critical of his players after their poor start to the season continued with a 2-1 defeat at Northampton.

Fraser Horsfall headed in against his old club after 12 minutes but Stockport lost control of the game in the first 20 minutes of the second half, during which time Sam Hoskins and Harvey Lintott turned things around.

Much-fancied County have won only two of their first 10 games and are 17th in the Sky Bet League Two table.

“Ultimately, it comes down to not being able to trust people to make the right decisions over 90 minutes,” said Challinor. “That’s absolutely killing us at the moment.

“I don’t think it’s a case of the players not being good enough because individually they have shown they can do it, but you have to do it consistently over 90 minutes.

“Decision-making has cost us massively miles too often this season and it’s cost us again today. When there’s adversity, that’s when you see the true colours of people and we find it difficult in those moments.

“You look at the two halves today, first half was good and we had decent control and we didn’t make many wrong decisions.

“A lot of our pre-game stuff was around set-pieces and we defended them well in the first half but then conceded two in the second half and that’s really poor.

“It’s through individual mistakes and bad decisions that resulted in giving away too many cheap free-kicks and that cost us massively.”

Northampton were poor in the first half but improved markedly after the break to register their fourth straight league win and move up to second place.

“I’m really pleased with the character of the group,” said Cobblers boss Jon Brady. “As everyone knows, we made a conscious effort to bring in younger players and for those youngsters to help dig out a result like that just shows how much character we have.

“Last year, we only picked up two points from losing positions and I said at the start of the season that we wanted to turn that around.

“Obviously I don’t want to be down in games but I think that shows how much character there was in the team today.”

Northampton were helped by two half-time changes, with Brady adding: “Our quality from the back up to the forward line wasn’t good and we needed more physicality up top so we changed it and I thought it really worked.

“We put them on the back foot and we scored the goals but we really banged on the door and had other chances as well.”