NEWPORT County boss Justin Edinburgh has indicated he will fine midfielder Adam Chapman for his red card in the 2-1 defeat to Portsmouth.

The Exiles were downed by the visitors – who brought by far the biggest contingent of fans to Rodney Parade this season – thanks to two first half goals and two red cards.

Darcy Blake was dismissed late on for two yellow cards but it was Chapman’s first half horror tackle with the score at 1-0 that really damaged the Exiles.

Chapman had won a free kick with some fine skill before launching himself at Danny Hollands and in an instant the entire ground knew what the outcome would be as Newport played out over an hour with a numerical disadvantage.

And Edinburgh has admitted the matter will be addressed.

“I don’t have any complaints on either red card, the two yellows for Darcy have just happened as part of the game with us chasing and it’s disappointing with Adam, he’s let himself down and cost us dearly. It’s very out of character for him,” he said.

“The referee had given the free kick, I don’t know if Adam didn’t hear that, but he has made a reckless challenge.

“We will deal with it in-house, I won’t criticise, and I won’t publically talk about my players in that way. But he knows.

“It’s something that shouldn’t happen, it’s out of character and it’s obviously had a big reflection on the game.”

Edinburgh was proud of the efforts of his ten and then nine men, who were given hope by Ismail Yakubu’s late header.

“Even down to nine men I felt we still took the game to Portsmouth and I give my players every credit for that,” he said.

“Even at 2-0 down we kept at it and that’s why our fans cheered our nine men off the pitch.

“If you take the sending off (Chapman) and the penalty out of the game, I thought we were very good.

“We controlled it, we were caught a couple of times on the counter attack because we had to throw everything we had at them, but I felt we were the better side.

Edinburgh refused to blame the Rodney Parade pitch for Newport’s poor recent form, and instead looked optimistically towards next season.

“The pitch is what it is and we have to overcome it, but we know without a doubt it’ll be better for next season,” he said.

“We look back to where we were before the bad weather and the pitch and losing momentum (County had risen to fourth with games in hand on the automatic promotion spots on December 26), but we’ll learn from that and correct it and get better and take it into next season.”