The Bradford City game on Tuesday night takes place at Sixfields against a backdrop of people wondering what might have been.
It could all have been so different had Friday’s game against Barnet gone with the form book and not turned out to be a catastrophic mess of a fixture.
If the Cobblers, as they should and most definitely could have done, beaten the Bees they would have gone as high as fifth in the npower League Two table, and the weekend results would have ensured they stayed in the play-off places.
There would have been a real buzz around the ground this week.
Supporters would have rubbed their hands at the FA Cup draw pairing the team with Bradford City at home - as it was, they groaned.
Attendances, which have been decent but not spectacular, would have risen for these two games.
There wouldn’t have been queues back to the cinema, but the club could reasonably have expected to get a few hundred more souls in the place.
So it’s back to being ‘under the radar’ again.
The club is spared speculation from outside that they might do something special this season.
The pressure, in a sense, is off.
Alex Nicholls commented in an interview not so long ago that the players don’t mind this - they like the fact that people don’t talk about them, that they are allowed to quietly do their thing.
So it is now a time to take stock and get back to the basics.
Maybe, with thoughts of a big win in everyone’s heads on the way down to Barnet on Friday night, we were in danger of getting ahead of ourselves.
A little stability is needed now. Progress, too, and league points of course, but mainly stability, a reassertion of resilience and certainly no results like the one last Friday.
After all, as Aidy Boothroyd has consistently stated, it’s all about staying in the pack...
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