Mike Flynn has affirmed he will be expecting his Newport County AFC players to show him a response next weekend after their 100% home record to start the League Two campaign was halted by Yeovil Town’s 6-0 victory at Rodney Parade.
After a relatively balanced first 20 minutes to start proceedings in South Wales, Yeovil opened the scoring after 20 minutes as ex-Exile Jordan Green capitalised on a slip from Scot Bennett to find Diallang Jaiyesimi then Yohan Arquin in the area, the left-winger smashing home despite the best efforts of a helpless Joe Day in the County goal.
Green was certainly returning to Rodney Parade to haunt his former employers and he took the wind out of the sails of a resurgent County side when doubling the advantage with a clever finish on 38 minutes.
Just before that chance, Padraig Amond was unlucky only to see his effort cannon back off Mark Harris, before Tyreeq Bakinson, who had earlier Cruyff turned his way past Alex Pattison, saw the rebound hooked away by another ex-Exile in Gary Warren.
Yeovil weren’t done there for first-half proceedings and took a commanding advantage into half-time when Jaiyesimi reacted quickest to head home after Day had produced a wonderful stop to initially thwart Arquin.
Green continued his own personal crusade when finding Yeovil’s fourth just three minutes after the restart when blasting through Day's legs, before the Glovers completed the scoring late on through substitute Olufela Olomola and a free-kick from defensive maestro Carl Dickinson.
That saw County suffer their first home league defeat since the Stevenage reverse in April and Flynn has demanded a response from his squad next weekend.
He affirmed: “First of all, the performance was not good enough. I want to apologise to the supporters who turned up in their thousands today.
“Listen, we got ripped apart by a very, very efficient Yeovil Town team. I’m not going to make any excuses, we defended poorly, we knew they were going to hit us on the break today with their pace and we didn’t carry out anything that we worked on.
“It’s a tough one to take obviously. No one saw that coming today but you can’t go from defending the way we did at Port Vale and Oldham to what happened today.
“It’s back to the drawing board. It's a day to forget but we have to get them ready for Tranmere next week.”
Like County, Yeovil Town have also started the season in inspired form when trying to put a stop to three successive seasons in the lower echelons of League Two.
The Glovers maintained their unbeaten run since the opening day of the season with victory at Rodney Parade, and even when they did suffer defeat last month, the nine-men of Yeovil held out valiantly until Bury FC made their numerical advantage count in stoppage time.
They also had the added bonus of an 11-day break from league and cup competition heading into the contest, after their match against MK Dons last weekend was postponed due to international call-ups for the Glovers.
And Flynn made sure to praise Darren Way and his side post-match for causing County problems at Rodney Parade.
“We played into their hands unfortunately,” he admitted.
“We were sloppy, allowed them to counter-attack on us, and there were too many players who were off it today.
“Credit to Yeovil, they really punished us. I don’t ever want to be a manager who doesn’t credit the opposition when they deserve it. I thought they were very good Yeovil.”
He added: “I thought Yeovil were excellent. They defended well, they had good players in the middle of the park who kept their discipline and shape, and they’ve got a lot of pace up-front.
“That hurt us today. We got beat by a Yeovil Town team who were far better than us today.
“I can’t put my finger on why we didn’t do what we talked about and planned to put into action during the game. It’s a bad result and I’ll be wanting a response next week.”
County have a full week to learn and recover from the contest before heading to Tranmere Rovers next weekend.
Commenting on his thoughts before that trip, Flynn stated: “I don’t think the players need a wakeup call specifically but it’s a reminder to the players of how hard the season can be.
“It’s football and we have to ensure that we do the things that we work on in order to get the results that we want.
“Today we didn’t do that, and we paid the price unfortunately.”
Despite the result, County still remained in the automatic promotion places of the League Two table and just three points off the early pace setters Lincoln City.
Flynn continued: “We’ve had a good start to the season and that’s a big reminder of how brutal this league can be. We’ll be back working hard this week trying to put it right next weekend.
“Sometimes you learn more about your players in circumstances like that compared to winning.”
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