Cobblers: Why we had to sack the manager
NORTHAMPTON Town chairman Kelvin Thomas has explained the thinking behind dismissing manager Keith Curle after the transfer window had closed.
Curle landed his targets in January, making four loan signings, but was sacked earlier this week with the team second bottom in League One.
Promoted last season, they saw many of the squad move on in the summer as financial cutbacks were needed.
“Football is not an exact science and you can only go by results,” said Thomas.
“You can’t not make the decision because it’s only a week after the window closed.
“I think it was the right thing to back Keith in the window and he said himself he got the targets he wanted but you can’t predict the future.
“Is there an argument to say we could have brought in someone else in December? I’m not sure it’s as easy as that so I’m not concerned with that view.”
Northampton have scored fewer goals – 20 – than any other club in the division and failed to score in their last four games, losing 1-0 at home to Wigan Athletic last time out.
“The lack of goals has obviously been discussed and it’s something I talked to Keith about but it became a bit of a concern after we made some changes during January,” said Thomas.
“We don’t make decisions based on one game or one aspect.
“We try and do our research and we look at the statistical information. We even looked at expected goals and things like that and it wasn’t as if we were creating lots of chances and had strikers missing opportunities. It was a big concern that we needed to address.
“Wigan was obviously not a good performance and we certainly didn’t threaten their goal.
“We just felt, with 20 games to go, it was the right time to change it and freshen things up.”
Youth coach Jon Brady is in caretaker charge.
“I think there is a platform to stay up and we had concerns we weren’t going to get there if we didn’t score goals and weren’t creating chances,” added Thomas.
“There’s still 20 games and it does give us a chance. We wanted to give ourselves the best chance of staying up but we also wanted to give Keith a fair crack at it because he had done so well to get the club into the position we’re in.”