The Boys are back in town!

Demontagnac…set for pre-season

With the European Championships finished, it’s finally time to fully turn our attention to the start of the league season. The Cobblers players report back for what is set to be an intense pre-season training regime. Aidy Boothroyd has already promised the players hell in the build-up to the 2012/13 season so hopefully there’s not been too many Nandos consumed over the last couple of months by the Town players. The three new signings so far have all been attacking with Alex Nicholls, Clive Platt and triple word Scrabble score Ishmel Demontagnac signing up.

We’re looking bare at the back still but with the passing of July 1st there’s usually a plethora of new additions to the free transfers list as players make their final decisions on new deals. But what do we have so far? I’ve been trying to come up with a starting line-up from what we have in the squad as things stand and ended up with this:

Higgs

Johnson, Langmead, Webster, Charles

Nicholls, Guttridge, Tozer, Harding, Demontagnac

Platt/Bayo

From that, I would say that Byron Webster is likely to not be first choice while Anthony Charles can play left-back but wouldn’t be my obvious pick for the whole season. An experienced head in the centre of defence is a must if it’s going to be Langmead back there and we saw a marked improvement with him after he was paired with Clarke Carlisle. Carlisle is looking more and more like moving elsewhere next season so I’m hoping Aidy is casting his net further afield.

The base of a good squad is critical and we need experience at the back, especially with some of the ambitious signings being made elsewhere in this division.

I’m pretty happy with the midfield and attack and think that Boothroyd will go for a 4-5-1 with pacy wingers feeding one of the big men up top. That could be wrong of course and there are the likes of Jake Robinson and Lewis Wilson to throw into the mix as well. The month of July is set to be a pretty hectic one but as the squad prepares for a trip to Croatia for a training camp there’ll hopefully be some more movement in the ‘incomings’ column in the next week or so.