Dean Hammond admits Saints should have been more comfortable winners at Northampton.

The skipper was unfortunate to be credited with an own goal after his 59th minute strike which later turned out to be the winner, was awarded by the linesman on the near side.

"I'm glad it crossed the line because the rebound hit the post, but I think it just creeped over the line," he explained.

"We played well for about 70 minutes I'd say because we had a sloppy last 15-20 minutes with a couple of goals given away which we need to work on as a team because we keep doing that. We're in the hat though so it's a good result for us.

"We had a lot of chances in the game and for the last half an hour or so we were cruising to a point where you could see the difference, but we're on a good run even though we had the defeat against Brighton, since then we've picked up again and we're very confident.

"We'd created a few chances but I thought we were going to go in at 0-0 and we would have been disappointed with that. We then had a five minute spell where we really turned it up and got a couple of goals which killed the game really, which was nice.

"I don't know if it's an own goal for me or whether I touched it, but we've given a couple of goals away when we could have won 3 or 4-0 so that's the disappointing side of the day, but we won, we're in the hat and we're happy with that."

The midfielder expressed his joy at maintaining the good form going in league and cup competitions and revealed that he will now be keeping a close eye on the draw for the third round of the F.A Cup.

"It was just another game. It's one we're playing in so we wanted to win it. They're all very important, league and cup we want to win in them so we take them very seriously.

"It'd be nice to get a trip to Wembley from one of them but we're taking it one step at a time, we won't get ahead of ourselves and we'll keep trying to win.

"I've played in the third round before with Brighton, but never got close to the fourth round. I've never gone past the third round before so I'd like to get a team we can beat at home, if not then I'll take one of the bigger boys away from home.

"The support has been fantastic all year and today there probably were more Saints fans than Northampton," Hammond added. "They're great, they really help the lads."