Lee Grant says Huddersfield seeing rewards for focus after beating Northampton

Huddersfield manager Lee Grant believes his players are seeing the rewards for their renewed focus and defensive solidity as they claimed a third straight win at home to Northampton.

A 2-0 victory courtesy of goals from Joe Low and Bojan Radulovic moves Huddersfield up two places to fifth, but Grant is keen for his players not to get carried away by their improved form.

He said: “The focus for the group at the minute is really narrow – it’s almost tunnel vision on the specifics of each game and roles and responsibilities and what’s important for us right now.

“That will continue, and importantly for us at the minute, there’s trust and belief in what we’re doing going in one direction, and there’s a real growing trust and belief and momentum in terms of understanding what’s needed in the opposite direction when we’re defending our goal.

“In the last spell of games, the thing that’s pleased me the most is they have really bought into and understood the things that we’re asking of them.

“They seem really clear-headed about not only what we’re doing with the football and how we want to cause teams problems, but they’re also really clear and focused on the other side of it as well.

“That’s obviously paid off now with our back-to-back clean sheets, which is nice, because they’ve been working hard on it, and I can see that they’re really dialling into their roles and responsibilities.”

Northampton are now just a point above the relegation zone having also suffered a 5-1 defeat away to Burton on Friday afternoon.

Manager Kevin Nolan said: “We couldn’t get any worse than Boxing Day could we, let’s be honest! But no, look, that’s gone now, and if we’re just talking about this game then I’m just disappointed.

“We conceded right on half-time, which then changes the game after sustaining through a lot of big pressure, which you expect when you come away to these kinds of teams.

“I think the lads did that really well, but then they just switch off and you get punished.

“I spoke to them at half-time about what we wanted to see, and I think we saw more of it, but not as much as I would have liked. I think sometimes, we had moments where our decision-making wasn’t quite right – not putting balls in the box when we’ve got people in the box.

“For the second goal you can say credit to Huddersfield for getting upfield, but it was really poor on our behalf.

“I’m disappointed in that. We wanted to stay in the game because you never know what will happen in the final few minutes.”