Adebayo Akinfenwa insists he does not feel under any extra pressure to be the Cobblers’ goalscorer-in-chief in the wake of Alex Nicholls’ season-ending injury.
Akinfenwa bagged his seventh goal of the season in Tuesday’s 1-1 draw at York City, a strike that leaves him one behind Nicholls at the top of the club’s list of goalscorers.
Town’s next highest scorer is central defender David Artell, who has four, followed by a trio of players with two apiece – Kelvin Langmead, Chris Hackett and Louis Moult.
Artell and Nicholls are out injured and Moult will miss three games through suspension, which will put the goalscoring emphasis on Akinfenwa and Hackett, who was excellent at Bootham Crescent.
But the powerful striker said: “I don’t feel under extra pressure, not at all.
“The flip side is that Nicho has taken the pressure off of me by getting a lot of goals.
“So it’s not a change for me, I just go out there and try to keep doing what I do.
“I’ve set a few personal goals for myself and as long as the team is winning I’m okay with that.
“I don’t put any extra pressure on myself (because Nicholls is injured) but I do put that pressure on myself anyway.
“My aim is always to go out there, put things on my shoulders, man up and step up to the stage but I don’t put any added pressure on myself.”
Losing Moult to suspension will be a blow for the club, who hoped he would be a like-for-like replacement for Nicholls and to the player himself, who was preparing for a long run in the side to prove his first-team credentials.
The challenge for which he was sent off at York was a rash, high one and certainly warranted a sending-off.
Akinfenwa says it is important the former Stoke City trainee learns from the experience and uses it to benefit him in the future.
“All over the pitch you’ve got to have a ruggedness about you as a football,” he said. “Even Lee Nicholls, our goalie, has got to have that.
“You can’t be too soft and you can’t be too nice but there is a line you can’t cross and Moulty crossed it.
“It was a bad tackle and it’s unfortunate for him because he’d scored two goals in two games before that and now he’ll miss some games.
“Every day is a learning day in football and he’ll take this lesson on the chin.”
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