Dave Challinor believes promotion is still on the cards for Stockport

Dave Challinor insists his Stockport side are embracing the pressure of returning to the Sky Bet Championship for the first time in almost 25 years.

The Hatters lifted themselves back into the play-off places as they ended a three-match losing run on the road with a welcome return to home comforts.

Josh Stokes scored one, via a deflection, and assisted top scorer Kyle Wootton’s 18th league goal of the season as County returned to winning ways with a 2-1 win over managerless Northampton.

Challinor said: “We thoroughly deserved to win the game.

“But we have to be more clinical, of course we do. We need to get better at that evidently.

“The fans were really good when the players needed them tonight. I know what it can be like when we’ve become accustomed to winning and when you concede a goal like we did just before half-time.

“We’ve set the bar really high and because of that there’s going to be that expectation and I’m fine with that.

“We’re still in it. We’ve got a cup final to look forward to. Hopefully we can have an exciting end to the season.

“We still have our overall objective [promotion] to play for.

“Things have flipped for us recently. We had the best away record, but we well and truly put paid to that.

“We’ll recover from tonight and look forward to Saturday to continue this run.”

Struggling Northampton are seven points off safety after an eighth league outing without a win.

Cameron McGeehan levelled, but the Cobblers failed to hold on for a precious point.

Interim boss Colin Calderwood said: “It was a tough start to the game and the deflection sums up where we are at the moment.

“We’ve talked about how we need to find a way to get the rub of the green and a bit of fortune, but Stockport started in top gear and we made one or two errors that added to their momentum.

“The lads grappled the game back to get us to half-time at 1-1, credit to them for that because they showed fortitude, and then we put Jake [Evans] on to try and get two up front at the start of the second half, but we should deal with their second goal better than we did.

“The annoying thing is that it comes from what we did with the ball. We were slow, slack and unaware, and the rhythm of our passing could have been so much nicer and better.

“It’s obviously affected by the atmosphere and the aggression of opposition, but we have to overcome that and you have to be able to handle that as this level.

“We turned the ball over too much and we wasted possession on too many occasions and we can’t afford that at any point, never mind now.”