Our uphill climb continues against the Cobblers

We've come through some rough stuff this season at Charlton, but since we're on an upward climb in the foothills of League One, it's fitting that we're off to the Cobblers this weekend.

After overcoming the mountainous task of consecutively facing the top three teams in our division, we could be forgiven for thinking we've got some respite in a fixture against mid-table Northampton. Around 1500 fans are lacing up their boots to head up there in expectation on Saturday afternoon but we also know to be wary of the home side's threat.

Just over a month ago, a late defeat to the same team led to Michael Appleton getting the boot. Then Nathan Jones came home and the rest is history. But although the tune might be as happy as Bananarama's right now, we've got to make sure we keep up the momentum from an epic midweek win over Derby and don't let this become a banana skin on our upwards journey.

To date, we’ve played Northampton Town's Cobblers 36 times - with 13 wins, 13 draws and 10 defeats. Something's got to give then as we face them again this Saturday at Sixfields Stadium, but which way will the statistics swing? Of late, they've been slightly in our favour, including an absolutely dominant 4-0 win in March 2018, with a stellar performance from Tarique Fosu-Henry. That afternoon, with Lee Bowyer in his second match as caretaker manager, we saw flashes of a side that would evolve into League One play-off winners the following season.

Right now though, the emphasis is very much on thoughts of escape rather than promotion. Even on Tuesday night, in his post-match interview on Charlton TV, the gaffer definitely wasn't resting on his laurels. Although gushing praise for the performance of his team, especially the rejuvenated Conor Coventry and the youngsters in the side, he also cautioned that "there’s a lot of hard work to be done" and "we’ve got to keep that going, keep maintaining that, because we’ve got some big games coming up.”

Crucially though, for us as fans, he talked about "setting platforms" and putting "foundations in place to hopefully give us a springboard for the future.” We can only hope those platforms continue to grow in the home of shoes at the weekend. It won't be easy against a side that are eleven points to the good above us, with a similar goal difference. But with the momentum of the last three games and the mood in the squad at the present time, we can go into Saturday's match confident of coming back from Sixfields with more points on the board. Ideally we can fill our boots with all three.