Scot Bennett made his 19th appearance of the season in the 2-1 defeat to Barnet at Rodney Parade.
He played in the centre of midfield during the game, a position he has held before on several occasions, although the Exiles changed their usual line up to a 4-4-2 formation this time out.
Bennett has two goals already this campaign, both coming away from home, against Morecambe and Forest Green Rovers.
Post-match, he spoke exclusively to iFollow Exiles about the Barnet game, Ben White’s first goal for the club and making the relatively short trip to Swindon Town on Saturday.
On the Barnet game…
“All the lads in there are devastated. To let it happen again, it’s the third time now in a row that we’ve let a lead slip so it’s a hard one to take. We need to start looking at ourselves now because it’s not good enough.
“I thought first-half it was just a scrap, it was a hard game to get into with the weather and the pitch.
“Second-half, I thought for fifteen or twenty minutes we played quite well, did alright and got into the game. We got the ball down a bit but once we score, we’ve got to keep them out in the last ten minutes.
“It’s two really bad goals to concede again.”
On it becoming one win in six league games for the Exiles…
“I don’t know what it is at the minute because we should be able to do it.
“We’ve shown early on in the season that we could do it and for the last three games we haven’t been able to do it and it’s not good enough.
“We’ve got to work on it, it’s just game management and at the minute we’re just making little mistakes like losing the ball on the half-way line.
“That lets them have a run at the defence and get a free header at the back-post, it’s not good enough at this level and we can’t let these goals keep happening.”
On how the weather affected the conditions at Rodney Parade…
“First-half it was really difficult to judge the bounce and it was a battle.
“They tried to hit it to the two front men and turn us in-behind, we sort of got drawn into their game a little bit and after that we had a chat, sussed it wasn’t good enough in the first-half.
“It was just us playing their game, lumping the ball forward and like I say, second-half we settled down a little bit and that’s where we got our goal from.
“But to capitulate like we did in the last ten minutes is just a shame.
On Ben White getting his first professional goal…
“It’s always nice to score your first professional goal and get that duck away.
“He’s settled into the team so well, he’s a class act and it’s nice for him to get the goal.
“But like you say, unfortunately it would have been better for us to have won the game and he would have got his goal in a win but hopefully now he can kick on and score a few more.
“No chance did Podge get a touch to it – he can have that.
“That’s Whitey’s all-day long. If Podge tries to claim that one, then there’s something wrong with him because he completely missed the ball.”
On the two goals conceded and potential injury concerns…
“I thought we were settled and didn’t really ever look like conceding.
“They didn’t really create anything but then we give away a sloppy ball in the midfield which gives Akinde a free run, he plays the ball out wide and then Whitey’s not really got any chance to stop him because he’s got 20 yards to run in at him.
“It’s hard to defend those situations and then he stands the ball up and it’s just bad defending. You can’t have free headers in the box two yards out, it’s just sloppy so we’re going to have to look at it.
“I don’t think it was just because of the two injuries either. It’s a shame for us that they had to go off but it’s part of football.”
On facing Swindon Town on Saturday…
“All the games in League 2 are big games and that’s been proven today. They were in the bottom two, but they came here, and they’ve turned us over.
“We’ll be looking to bounce back now, we’re lucky that it’s quite a quick turnaround and we’ll be looking to go there Saturday and pick up the three points because we desperately need them.
“We haven’t looked too much specifically at Swindon yet because we’ve been concentrating on tonight because we were hoping to get the three points.
“We wanted to be able to go into Saturday and really kick on but we’re going to have to go in Thursday now, train hard, analyse them and we’ll come up with a game plan and we’ll go to look and win the game like we do every time.”