Brady focusing on the here and now and says he will play 'front foot' football at Cobblers

Caretaker boss bats away questions about the full-time job
Jon Brady took training on Thursday. Picture: Pete Norton.Jon Brady took training on Thursday. Picture: Pete Norton.
Jon Brady took training on Thursday. Picture: Pete Norton.

Jon Brady insists he is only interested in the here and now and has not even considered taking the Cobblers job on a full-time basis.

The 46-year-old Australian enjoyed a long career as a player, mostly in non-league, before spending six successful years in charge of National League North side Brackley Town between 2009 and 2015.

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He has been with Northampton's academy since 2016, including nearly four years as head coach of the U18s, but will take charge of the first-team as caretaker boss for the foreseeable future following Keith Curle's departure earlier this week.

Brady is the current favourite to take over full-time with the bookies but, for now, he is only interested in the short-term and trying to turnaround Town's ailing fortunes.

"I was only asked to take over on Wednesday afternoon and it's been a crazy 24 hours since," he said.

"It would be selfish of me to think like that at the moment. I love my job with the youth team here and I love developing young players and helping them get into the first team.

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"All I want to do is help the club move forward and get out of the position they find themselves in. It's not about anyone else, it's about what we do and what we do to impact us positively going forward."

There will be a lot of focus on how the team plays under Brady following heavy criticism of Curle's style of play.

Cobblers scored just one goal in Curle's last seven games in charge and remain the lowest scorers in League One by some distance.

Brady added: "One thing is for sure is that we'll be really on the front foot, we'll be getting bodies into the box and putting crosses in and getting shots off and it won't be through for the want of trying in terms of scoring goals.

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"Without giving too much away, it's about the freedom for players to get into the box and the freedom for players to express themselves in the final third.

"We need to move the ball quickly and keep our ball speed high and a lot of that we went through on Thursday and we really enjoyed seeing the players express themselves.

"There has to be an attitude to believe we will get on the end of things and I felt that I saw a lot of that in training, but now we need to take it into matches."