Predicting and analysing what might happen next for the Cobblers in becoming increasingly difficult with every passing game.
Inconsistency has been an issue for the team for so long that it appears to be in the club’s DNA and injuries have complicated any potential patterns even further.
After the York game, Aidy Boothroyd joked that even his players are becoming confused by what system they are playing on a week-to-week basis, so often is he shuffling the Sixfields pack to accommodate the latest medical setback.
This week he will possibly be without John Johnson – who has a knee injury - and definitely Louis Moult, who has a three-game suspension.
Those absences will mean another swap around of playing personnel and system for the Saturday game at Accrington.
Far be it for a mere football reporter to tell an experienced and knowledgeable coach like Boothroyd what to do, but my view is the manager simply must implement two things this weekend.
The first is that he has to start Lewis Hornby in central midfield. Leaving aside the common sense that is associated with developing and nurturing talent from within the club’s youth ranks, it is also a selection that makes itself.
There is a tendency to take decisions about youth-team players with the heart rather than the head (after all, Hornby, like Michael Jacobs or Luke Chambers or Mark Bunn before him is “one of our own”, as the song goes) but Hornby deserves a start on merit.
Using Tuesday as a barometer, he should be the second name on the team sheet at the Crown Ground (Chris Hackett is the first – he was excellent at York and has been very good all season).
The second piece of tactical advice from this corner of the Chron’s luxurious offices is to play Ben Tozer as a central defender.
He looks much more comfortable there and is much more a natural fit as a sweeper than in central midfield, where just lately he has started to look a little unsettled and discombobulated at times.
Tozer was at his best when at the heart of a five-man defence, a system the club have the personnel to play, with Hackett, Hornby and Emyr Huws as a three-man H-themed line in midfield and Adebayo Akinfenwa and Clive Platt up front.
So, actually, it turns out picking the team is a pretty straightforward process.
Getting them to play together as a cohesive unit with the required application and intensity, however, is quite a different prospect.
Aidy, this is where you come in.
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