Michael Flynn says Newport County AFC will be buoyed by a free weekend as they look to hit the ground running tomorrow night against Grimsby Town in the Emirates FA Cup which starts a congested run of fixtures in the busiest time of the football calendar.
The visiting Mariners also had Saturday off as County were meant to be travelling back up to Lincolnshire for the second time in seven days but three international call-ups – Tom King, Danny McNamara and Keanu Marsh Brown – meant the fixture was postponed.
Over that time period Michael Jolley has left his position as Grimsby Town manager meaning Anthony Limbrick and Dave Moore will be in the dugout taking caretaker charge tomorrow night.
And Flynn admits County must be wary of a managerial change and can’t necessarily look at it as a reason to be optimistic.
He affirmed: “It’s going to be a difficult game – no two games are the same, it doesn’t matter if it’s against the same team.
“Grimsby have lots of strengths. They’re aggressive on set plays, they’ve got James Hanson who is probably the best player in the league in the air. We know Matt Green can score goals, Jake Hessenthaler in midfield can control a game if given space. They can cause problems.
“The manager’s gone so a couple of the players will feel like they have a fresh start. That can be a bad thing for us, I can’t affect what happened at Grimsby Town, I just want to concentrate on what we do, and I want to get the win.
“Nothing surprises me in football anymore. It’s sad to see a manager lose his job and I don’t like seeing manager’s lose jobs. That’s the sad part of the industry.
“We’ll find out tomorrow night if the weekend break was a good thing.
“The boys are rested, and I think it will be really beneficial going forward because we’ve got a very busy schedule over the next two months – including the Christmas period – so it was important.
“It gives one or two of the injured boys one less game to miss because Mickey Demetriou isn’t too far away.
“I think the feeling towards the FA Cup is bigger [than last season]. Once you have a taste of it, you want more of it.
“I like to think that myself and my players want to be successful. You only have to look at Man Utd in the 90s/00s when they weren’t happy winning one Premier League, they wanted another one. When they had two, they wanted three.
“That’s why they were so successful, and we want that same mentality.”