PRE MATCH | Robinson praises Addicks' response in training following Tuesday's disappointment

George Jones reports

Karl Robinson has praised his players’ response in training since Tuesday’s defeat at Shrewsbury Town and hopes that they can translate that into three points at Northampton on Saturday.

The Addicks boss was critical of them following the midweek reverse and, after arriving back at the training ground at 3.30am on Wednesday morning, they were back out on the training pitch less than nine hours later.

And the Manager hopes that their hard work will pay off when they travel to Sixfields at the weekend.

“I’m happy they took the criticism the right way and now they want to put it right,” he said. “The way the players responded yesterday was outstanding and – as much as I was disappointed with them the night before - I was very pleased.

“It was a really interesting day, where I did something that I haven’t done before, and I was really pleased with every single player. We split the players into two groups, we watched the game back and they delivered to me what they thought was wrong as if they were the coach.

“It was nice to sit there and, more often than not, if you give responsibility to the players then they’ll do what you think is right anyway. All the problems I had with the game, they elaborated on themselves.

“They accepted criticism from each other as men and then we walked through one or two things on the pitch. It was very positive.

“Hopefully that leads to success on Saturday and we are fully preparing ourselves for the job in hand at the weekend.”

Ricky Holmes netted a hat-trick in Tuesday’s game and his Manager was full of praise for his performance.

Robinson said: “Even if you take his goals away, he was the hardest working player on the pitch. The stats will prove that as well; he covered the most distance and the highest number of high-intensity metres.

“That’s why you score goals, because you work hard. He is a tremendous individual and when I arrived here I was without him for 10 games.

“I never had the chance to play with him and Ademola in the same team. At the start of the season, they were the ‘x-factor’ and we have got to find that in a different way at the moment while we’re re-shuffling and getting ourselves ready for the back-end of the season.”