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Northampton back to earth with a bump One month after eliminating Liverpool from the Carling Cup the Cobblers are in a wretched run for the next round at IpswichOn the face of it not much should have changed in the month since what is commonly agreed to be one of the two best victories Northampton Town have ever achieved in 113 years of league membership. Older fans would have you know that the FA Cup third-round win over Arsenal in 1958 is the No1 but the current team's defeat of Liverpool on penalties in the Carling Cup was a globally reported event which put the Anfield manager, Roy Hodgson, under renewed scrutiny, handed the club's then US owners another notice to quit and put the putative term "big five" on hold, probably for ever.Northampton's reward was a trip to Ipswich for a place in the quarter-finals and, while tomorrow's game should have represented a free hit for the manager, Ian Sampson, and his team – who won at Reading in the previous round, also on penalties – the 3,000 or more fans who make the two-hour trip will be expecting a performance if not a result following a run of five successive defeats which has seen them slip to second bottom of League Two."Anfield seems like an age away, light years," Sampson admitted after the fifth of those losses, an undeserved 3-1 reverse at Oxford United on Saturday. "We've only won one game in the league since. Such is the difference in football – within the space of a month you go from being a good team and a good manager to a poor team and a poor manager.Around 900 made it to Oxford and despite seeing their side fall behind early on they witnessed a well-worked equaliser from Leon McKenzie only to lose out to a needlessly conceded free-kick from 25 yards and a needlessly conceded stoppage-time penalty which will also cost them the services of the sent off John Johnson at Portman Road."We've had a couple of reports on Ipswich already so we know what they are doing and what they are about," added Sampson, who is short of central defenders and trying to borrow another after failing with an attempt to land Everton's Shane Duffy last week. "They will be working ever so hard for their manager, Roy Keane, and we will be prepared."Thirteen months in the job, an 11th-place finish and second on the all-time appearance list for Northampton with 449 games should buy Sampson at least as long as Hodgson has got but the manager is realistic enough to know that his position is under scrutiny, with a crucial fortnight coming up beginning with Saturday's visit from Gillingham.Northampton have been down this route before, of course, and after going into administration in 1992 over the sum of £1.6m and becoming the first club in Europe to have a fans' representative on the board soon after, they were spared demotion to the Conference in 1994 only as the team who won it, Kidderminster, had a ground which was not up to standard. The Cobblers had no such problems, moving to a purpose-built 7,500-seat arena from the cricket ground they shared with the county side later in 1994 and, while Sixfields is still their home, they have been trying to turn it into a 15,000-seat, Championship-standard ground for some time, with enhanced conference-staging facilities to help maximise income.Plans have fallen victim to local politics, however, with successive councils advocating a "town-centre-first policy" and the Lib-Dem rulers refusing to allow them to offload nearby land for a proposed garden centre to help finance the job as out-of-town retail developments are considered detrimental to the original centre's well-being.Further along the road the Northampton Saints rugby club have been refused permission to finance a new £8m stand by selling one of their car parks to Asda for £7m, their need probably being the more immediate as capacity is only 13,000 and any Heineken Cup matches from the quarter-finals onwards need to be played in 15,000-capacity arenas. The Milton Keynes stadium, 15 miles away, has already been pencilled in for that purpose."I've been at this club for eight years and common sense still hasn't prevailed," Northampton Town's chairman, David Cardoza, said. "When we started this fight Milton Keynes didn't exist as a club and now they are in with a chance of hosting World Cup games in 2018. Good luck to Milton Keynes, they are forward-thinking people working with a progressive council, and we need to learn from that."A lesson can also be taken from Oxford, who 10 years ago were in the post-Robert Maxwell era, debt-ridden and playing at the ramshackle Manor Ground while unable to finance a new development, only for the opportunistic Firoz Kassam to pay the council a reported £1.5m for the club's mothballed 10-acre Minchery Farm site by then populated by rusty girders and travellers, and build a new stadium to replace the one his company doubled their money on and a conference centre and develop the area with hotels, car parks and a bowling alley. There is a downside, of course, and Oxford pay him around £450,000-a-year rent but, with a seven-day income stream, they hope one day to be able to buy back the Kassam Stadium for around £13m, when they would hope to rename it.Such a scenario may seem a long way away for Cardoza but there is hope as a Lib-Dem councillor has recently defected (to Labour) and the now minority administration will limp to the May elections, with the Tories already intimating that they are receptive to a change of tack.Having seen off the challenge of nearby Rushden & Diamonds 10 years ago, Northampton now see themselves playing second fiddle to Milton Keynes while the town's ambitions to "Do a Leicester", with prominent teams playing at well-appointed venues in the two winter games plus cricket will remain just ambitions. Meanwhile the Carling Cup quarter-finals beckon and Ipswich are only 56 places above Northampton, 13 fewer than Liverpool were ahead of them last time.NorthamptonMark Tallentireguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |