Walsall midfielder Danny Guthrie inspired by Cobblers’ success

The Cobblers will be playing League One football next season after winning the play-offs this year.

Walsall beat them twice last season but finished 12th in the league and Guthrie wants to replicate Northampton’s consistency in 2020/21.

“We’ve got match winners, we’ve got grafters, we’ve got runners, we’ve got experience,” he said. “We’ve got a really good mix, so we’re confident as a group and I really think we just have to take it game by game.

“There’s going to be difficult times in the season, there’s going to be a period where we don’t win in a while. But there’s going to be periods where we win and it’s just about trying to keep that consistency throughout the season.

“The most consistent teams are always the one’s that go up. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the best team, as we’ve seen last year.

“Northampton went all through the play-offs and we did them twice, and we couldn’t have imagined they’d have gone up but they did.

“They would have kept consistent throughout the season, nothing special – and as we’ve seen last year the league was really even, there was nothing in it, there was no outstanding team.

“You could play Stevenage and have a really tough game and the next week go and play Swindon and think ‘wow, we’re not far off them’.

“It’s just finding that consistency and what will help us this year is the group, with another year together, being experienced and just being comfortable with each other.

“Sometimes it’s difficult to be so demanding on new players, but we’ve got to set them standards early and with another year together, everyone can demand a lot more off each other.”