A night of pure chaos at the Sixfield stadium and most of it outside the stadium. Welcome to the Second division is the main message to come out of this evening as QPR fans and players came in for a nasty culture shock. The problem with the fans is covered in a separate article on the news page so I won’t go into detail here instead I’ll talk about the match.

Rangers made a few changes to Saturdays team with Connolly out injured and Thomson rested in came Christer Warren to the left and new signing Dou Dou was up front.

The game had the air of a pre season friendly about it, fans were looking around a new stadium and laughing about how many fans had turned up whilst the game was pretty drab for the first ten minutes. This was the first time this season I had looked onto the pitch and it had hit me that we are now at the same level as Northampton and it was a bit of a shock to the system really. Rangers were getting stuck in and playing sensible football just keeping the ball whilst Dou Dou was showing some flashes of brilliance with his skill and pace up front. He almost opened the scoring with an excellent lob and was our main threat all night. We took the lead in bizarre circumstances.

A long kick by Chris Day seemed to just bounce straight in but it was Dou Dou who chased and caused a bit of panic as the defender headed it past his own keeper. At this stage it looked a pretty comfortable night ahead, Northampton were poor and we looked capable of adding a second which would kill them off. Unfortunately we took our foot off the pedal and relaxed a bit too much. Northampton began to get stuck in to our midfield and sensed a weakness on the left where Bruce and Warren were not playing particularly well. Marco Gabbiadini and Sam parkin both had good chances to score and Gabbiadini found himself clean through at one point only to see his shot well saved by Chris Day.

The back four were not playing great as Askar looked vulnerable for the first time but he was still making up for that with some excellent last ditch tackles. Stuart Wardley had a half chance to give us a two goal lead but at half time it was a job well done, No changes were made by Holloway at half time but you got the feeling that we would see Mcewen come on if we got the killer goal. Second half saw us have lots of possession but not create too much.

Wardey had a much improved half and worked hard up front but didn’t get much support from midfield and we were not playing as well as we can do. Northampton didn’t create much either and the game turned into a pretty dour affair and most fans just wanted to go home and get this out of the way. Once again it was the skills of Dou Dou which kept most of us awake, he has so much skill it is frightening and is very similar to Leon Knight in size and style.

One moment of note was an awful tackle by Levin. He went in high on Christer Warren and could have caused a serious injury but unluckily for him he broke his own leg trying to hurt Warren and should have been shown a red card as he was carried off.

With the game virtually over fans began to leave sensing a nice win but disaster soon struck. A break on the right saw Bruce and Warren left for dead and a cross in saw Day make another excellent save but Jamie Forrester tucked the rebound home for Northampton’s first goal of the season.

Six minutes of injury time followed and they almost won it with a long range shot being brilliantly saved by Day before we almost saw the goal of the night. Dou Dou picked up the ball 30 yards out, did a stepover and curled a brilliant shot into the stop corner which brought out a superb save from the keeper.

That was the last bit of action from Dou Dou who was replaced by Mcewen before the corner and a bizarre scene where a Northampton defender picked up an injury and received treatment and when Rangers fans screamed for him to get off the pitch he stepped forward and flicked a very fierce V sign at the QPR end and said “I think its time you chaps went home” or something like that anyway but it was soon over and extra time was to follow.

Groans filled the away end as most of us wanted to go home but another 30 minutes were to follow and most of it was pretty dull. Koejoe came on for Wardley to try and add something different up front but that just didn’t work. Northampton sensed our weakness and attacked Bruce and Warren at every opportunity and the winning goal didn’t seem far away. Marcus Bignot began to limp after seemed to struggle through the first half of extra time. We had a few chances to win it, Dave Mcewen hit one shot against the side netting when he should have crossed and I think Koejeo had a shot but I may have been daydreaming at that point. Second half of extra time and it looked like it was going to be penalties as neither side look to good going forward but one mistake at the back cost us badly.

Northampton worked the ball well on the left from a throw in and Paul Mcgregor found himself in acres of space as Bruce and Warren went missing. He was given the ball by Forrester and the former Notts Forest striker had time to compose himself and slot it past Day. That’s was it really, Rangers threw Pacquette on and Askar went up front but it was all to late and Northampton ran out deserved winners in the end. One of the main lessons to learn from this game is we must start to kill teams off when we had the chance, if we had just gone for that second goal in the first half we would probably have run out easy winners but instead we are out of the cup in the first round around.

Man of the match : Ebeli “Dou Dou” M'Bombo

1. Chris Day : Made a couple of excellent saves to keep us in it and had no chance with the goals. 7/10

17. Terrell Forbes : Got forward well and again almost scored with a great chip, one day that will come off. Defended well and showed what a good player he could be. 7/10

3. Paul Bruce : Very poor defensively and some may say he was found out tonight, when Northampton made a change to bring on some pace against him he was caught out on several occasions. 5/10

4. Steve Palmer : Started well commanding the defence well but as the game wore on he began to make a few mistakes and allowed the ball to bounce to often instead of attacking the ball which led to us being under more pressure. 6/10

28. Aziz Ben Askar : Made a few errors but made up for them with some excellent last ditch tackles and his distribution was also excellent. 6/10

2. Mark Perry : Did well on the right but couldn’t quite provide the creative spark we needed in the second half, does his job well and tries not to give the ball away cheaply. 6/10

11. Marcus Bignot : Always fights hard in midfield but got a knock in extra time and was limping for a while which is a bit of a worry. 7/10

26. Alex Bonnot : Always wants the ball and tries to bring others into play but it just wasn’t happening for him but to his credit he never let his head drop and was always trying to raise the spirits of those around him. 6/10

15. Christer Warren : Very poor, gave the ball away and his crossing was awful, we needed him to stay wide to provide an option for the midfield but he rarely got that right. 5/10

7. Stuart Wardley : Same old Wardley, tries his best and does some things right but is just not quite good enough to play up front in my opinion 6/10

29. Dou Dou : He showed us some stunning skill and blistering pace at times and was worth paying the entrance fee for. He almost scored three incredible goals and would be brilliant behind a front two in a free role. 8/10

19. David Mcewen : On for extra time but wasn’t really involved as we resorted to hoofing the ball instead of passing. 6/10

22. Richard Pacquete : Same as Mcewen really, on for about ten minutes but didn’t get a chance to show us what he can do. 6/10

18. Sammy Koejoe : Pretty poor from Sammy, you would hope he’d bring something from the bench but he just doesn’t seem to get any better. 6/10