Guangxi Province's Twinned City v Current Best League Two Team In The World (Newport v Orient)

[County1]

Good game today. Deserved a draw. Thought Orient were quality for first 30 mins - could've scored 5. After that we were the better team and played some good stuff. Bottom line is we can't afford to gift teams like Orient a 2 goal head start. Plymouth away next Sat will complete a tough August for us - more chance of getting some points in Sept especially with a few of the injured grown ups returning. Still confident we will be mid tableish come next May.

Hope you're right mate. At the moment, we are getting punished for every mistake and snatching a little at chances. But I suppose that's what you get with youngsters. At least we are playing some good football and, after a sticky opening 15 minutes, really took the game to an impressive Orient and were desperately unlucky not to get a point. Onwards and upwards to Plymouth - on the corresponding Saturday last year we won at Portsmouth. Let's hope for a similar outcome in Devon. Keep the faith, Amber Army!

 

[The Terminator]

Butcher has the hardest job in League Two IMO, you'll need the youngsters to learn fast. A very tough opening set of fixtures though on paper for Newport.

Our lack of strength in depth nearly caught up with us today. Our bench was mainly youth players and we had to play our 4th choice striker as left winger for the last 15mins as Cox got a slight injury. Our left back Frazer Shaw has potential but was caught out in the second half time and time again with diagnall balls played out to Holmes and Elito.

 

[County1]

Butcher has the hardest job in League Two IMO, you'll need the youngsters to learn fast. A very tough opening set of fixtures though on paper for Newport.

Our lack of strength in depth nearly caught up with us today. Our bench was mainly youth players and we had to play our 4th choice striker as left winger for the last 15mins as Cox got a slight injury. Our left back Frazer Shaw has potential but was caught out in the second half time and time again with diagnall balls played out to Holmes and Elito.

Lack of strength in depth! Welcome to our world, we generally have six teenagers on the bench!! You are lucky to have a fourth choice striker. We have three fit strikers, one of which is an 18 year old and another who arrived on loan yesterday. On the basis of today, would anticipate Orient finishing in the top three or four while hopefully we will grow as a team and pull away from the bottom two. Right now I would take 22nd and a sustainable club. Good luck for the season.

 

[Look Out There Are Llamas]

Watched the game back earlier, scored from our first two attacks and McCallum ought to have had another one. Saying that from the way Dave Victor/ the message board made out, I expected us to have been more dominant in the first 30 I have to say. Newport did not deserve to lose that. We had a lot of aimless long balls forwards which Feeley, and to a lesser extent Poole, dominated McCallum/ Simpson/ Cox to win the majority of these. Would have liked to see more crosses into the box, thought McCallum had the edge on Feeley for these. The midfield was defensively sound, worked very very hard. Feel Cisak should have done better for Newport's second, although he should have been closed down better. Pritchard and Simpson both noticeably had excellent ball retention. Baudry's reading of the play was stand out, although he could have distributed it better.

Now I'm going to be utterly harsh here on Kashket, but when he came on I didn't think he looked ready, at left midfield at least. He was a turnover machine and seemed somewhat naive defensively - as you'd expect an attacking midfielder/ forward with barely any professional games under their belt to be.

All in all, happy but lucky three points. (I say lucky, but really it came down to quality).