Next Up: Chesterfield at Home

With City’s season threatening to come to a juddering halt following a fourth defeat in five games at Northampton, Paul Tisdale’s men welcome managerless Chesterfield to the Park hoping to arrest this slide. Alan Gow made his return from the bench at Sixfields and will be pressing for a start, although his blistering early season form has brought him some unwanted attention from over-aggressive opponents, so his return will have to be monitored closely. To that end, Tisdale may opt for some extra protection in the midfield in the shape of Tom Doherty, while there remains a conundrum at the back with Rhys Evans and Artur Krysiak vying for the goalkeeper’s jersey.

Starting the season amongst the promotion favourites following relegation from League One last term, a stuttering start to the campaign saw John Sheridan lose his job, and in his place is caretaker boss Tommy Wright. The Spireites only actually lost one of their first eleven matches (plus a penalties defeat to Tranmere in the Capital One Cup), but only three of those matches were wins including one in the JPT. Since then they have lost three out of their last four, including a home defeat to Dagenham & Redbridge last Saturday. As has been somewhat the norm in recent seasons they are jokingly referred to as “Lesterfield” in honour of Jack Lester, who is this season’s top scorer with six goals despite only having started five games so far. However, the burden of expectation may be shared somewhat by the recent high-profile signing of ex-Arsenal and West Ham player Luis Boa Morte, the Portuguese returning to English Football following spells in Greece and South Africa.

The sides have met 38 times previously, with Chesterfield leading the way with 18 wins to City’s 10 (10 draws). However, it was City with the upper hand last season taking all six points – 2-1 at The Park (Archibald-Henville and Nichols for City, Whitaker for Chesterfield) and 2-0 at the B2Net Stadium (Logan and Sercombe). City will hope, though, to erase the memory of the last League Two outing at The Park, when some kamikaze defending allowed Chesterfield to romp to a 6-1 thrashing.4

We discussed the match officials earlier in the week here.