James Whiting

Good evening and thank you for your support.

As you would expect, there has been an a lot of interest in the position of manager. The club has an excellent reputation within the industry and we are an attractive proposition for many potential candidates. It is important however, that we take our time, we continue to assess the situation and we make the best decisions for the short, medium and long term future of the club.

We are very fortunate that we have an excellent coaching infrastructure at the club and that strength is illustrated by the way that Jon Brady, Marc Richards and Ian Sampson have overseen first team matters in recent weeks. They have done an excellent job in the short space of time since they stepped up to the first team on a caretaker basis and have the team organised, united and fighting for the cause. We look an attacking threat once again, we are creating chances and we are playing exciting football. This is obviously a season like no other and we are currently in the middle of a demanding run of games every three or four days so time to work with the players on the training ground is limited so credit to Jon, Rico, Sammo, Dan and the players.

Belief within the group is very good. The only disappointing thing over the last three games is that we haven’t got the results or points return that the performances have deserved. When you are in the position we are, it is often the way that you don’t get the rub of the green and decisions and other key moments in games go against you. This has been very evident over recent games, striking the woodwork four times an example of this. The post-match comments from Russell Martin (MK Dons manager) after Saturday's game were telling, he knew that they were extremely lucky to nick the win and that we dominated the game. So we must take the positives and use the injustice and disappointment of last week to bounce back in this busy and important week, with games against Rochdale this evening and away at Swindon Town on Saturday.

Last time out here at the PTS Academy Stadium we hosted Burton Albion on a day where fourteen games across the EFL were called off because of frozen pitches, but we managed to get our game on. Huge credit too to Paul Knowles, James Boddington and the rest of the groundstaff for getting the game on.

Away from the real world, and stepping in to our virtual world for a moment, our esports programme is flourishing. This is a strategic decision by the club to really expand our esports involvement and we are delighted with the progress we are making. A big thank you to the University of Northampton for their support of our esports programme, and if you haven’t yet seen our esports teams in action, please do check the club’s social media feeds. Whatever the restrictions of lockdown, our esports programme is unaffected and continues to grow, thrive and develop.

Thank you as always for your support.