Brady rues poor first-half display and wasteful finishing after Crawley defeat

Cobblers boss Jon Brady rued a combination of a poor first-half performance and wasteful finishing after his side were beaten 1-0 by Crawley Town on Saturday.

Tom Nichols scored the only goal of the game late in the first-half to snap Northampton's five-game winning run at Sixfields.

The home side improved immeasurably after a lacklustre and passive opening 45 minutes, but despite creating plenty in the second-half, they could not find an equaliser.

"It didn't quite happen for us today," admitted Brady. "From 60 minutes onwards we dominated and had 14 chances.

"We hit the bar and we had a one-on-one and on another day those chances go in, but I felt we lashed at a lot of our chances and we didn't have that composure.

"It's a bit of a smash and grab from them in my opinion because they had one chance all game.

"We had 61 per cent possession and 21 chances but in the first-half we weren't purposeful enough.

"We did our best in training in the week and we made the changes at half-time and I thought they made a big difference in the second half.

"But our decision-making and our purposefulness wasn't good enough in the first-half and we didn't take responsibility.

"We had a few choice words at half-time and I demanded more and I thought we looked a lot better.

"We had enough chances to win the game but it just wouldn't go in for us."