Manager Chris Wilder insists he will not abandon the faith he has in his younsgters.

And for that reason, there seem unlikely to be wholesale changes following last week’s collapse at Macclesfield, where the U’s surrendered a two-goal half-time lead and lost 3-2.

Fit-again Jake Wright will come back in, probably at the expense of 19-year-old Leigh Franks.

But Franks had performed well up until the second half at Moss Rose.

Many of the other young players in the side have produced far more good than bad this season, and Wilder wants them to go out in a positive frame of mind against Northampton.

Naturally, everyone will be looking to see how the players of Oxford United and Northampton Town react to last week’s second-half cave-ins.

United’s was bad, but probably not on the scale of the Cobblers’, who seemed to have victory nailed on as they led the bottom club, Hereford, 3-0 at the break.

But, in one of football’s more extreme “games of two halves”, Hereford hit back to win 4-3.

Said Wilder: “They’ll want to show a reaction, but I can’t be too interested in the opposition.

“We’ve shown respect to the opposition, but we’ve gone at teams home and away.

“We’ve always gone out to try and win the game, and Saturday will be no different.”

He added: “I believe in young players, and sometimes they have to learn from their mistakes.

“If they keep making mistakes, they have to come out of the team.

“But I look at Harry Worley. In 15 games, I think he’s been great.

“In one of those games, he’s lost his man, but otherwise he’s been great.

“The loom of being left out of the side always has to be there – there’s no shoe-ins – but sometimes you have to give players the chance to put things right – and Harry comes into that category.”

Northampton have had a strange season.

They beat Liverpool in the Carling Cup, but in npower League Two it’s now four successive defeats, which heave left manager Ian Sampson under pressure.

Fans turned on him after the Hereford game at Sixfields last Saturday, with the team booed off at the end.

Were he not a popular former player – he played for them for 11 years – he might have come in for even greater criticism, with the Cobblers third from bottom in the table.

Beating Liverpool at Anfield in the Carling Cup, on penalties after a 2-2 draw, was a fantastic achievement for the club.

But with the team struggling in the league, people are inevitably wondering whether that famous occasion, and next Tuesday’s trip to Ipswich in the next round, is a distraction.

“It may have been a few weeks ago but quite honestly, everyone’s forgotten about the Ipswich game now,” said Sampson’s assistant, Malcolm Crosby, the former Oxford United coach and manager.