NEWPORT County AFC manager Graham Westley says he’s 100 per cent focused on winning Saturday’s FA Cup tie at Plymouth Argyle, despite the acrimonious departure of club secretary Graham Bean.

County have confirmed this morning that they have “made the decision to part company” with Bean “in the best interests of the club.”

But they have so far not commented on reports that Westley is subject to an internal club investigation over allegations about his conduct towards staff members and that the manager resigned earlier this week before going back on that decision.

When asked about the reports, Westley said: “My understanding is that Graham Bean was relieved of his duties at the football club and he’s moved on from the football club.

“If there’s allegations that he’s making then he needs to make those allegations to me.

“From my point of view we’ve moved on as a club.

“We’re progressing as a football club.

“We’ve won five out of 11 games under my management having had one win in 13 before I arrived here.

“There’s a lot of things that are moving forward at the club, there’s a positive feel to where we’re going.

“We’ve had a couple of slip-ups in the past week – Wycombe edged a result against us that they probably didn’t deserve and Blackpool got the better of us last weekend.

“But they’re top clubs in this league right now, clubs that have been working hard to re-establish themselves at the top of the league.

“We fell slightly short against Wycombe, albeit I felt we deserved to win the game, and we fell slightly short against Blackpool.

“I think the lads showed against Blackpool that we had nine games in 36 days and I think they showed an element of weariness and tiredness.

“I think they showed that they missed one or two key players – Jazzi going off was a factor on top of Benno missing and Kyle Cameron being out so three of the back four that has been winning games was missing.

“Things just got the better of us – we lost our way a bit last weekend and the game went with it.

“This week’s been about putting everything back together, sorting out one or two bits and pieces that we felt needed sorting out and giving ourselves a good platform to move forward.

“The press statement that I read talked about decisions being made in the best long-term interests of the football club.”

Asked if he had resigned from his position before retracting that resignation, Westley added: “There are questions and allegations and people threw one or two press articles in front of me this morning but I’m a person who is professionally contracted to be confidential and professionally contracted to be professional.

“I think that people should do their business in the right way and in a professional way and that’s how I like to carry on.

“There’ll be many managers who make their own decision about where they’re going to go in the future and there’ll be many managers who have decisions made about them.

“What I can say is that I’ve been at Newport County for 11 games and I’ve worked very hard to win five of those 11 games, which is a big push forward from where the club was at.

“I think that the board, from what they say to me, are pleased with the job that I’m doing.

“I think they feel that I’ve injected the dressing room with ideas and belief and drive.

“I think they see that in the way that the team is performing.

“I think there’s an appreciation that any manager needs to build a squad in the image and the vision that he’s got.

“I think, as a board, they buy into the vision I’ve got for the football club and the way in which I want to build things going forward.”

Looking ahead to the FA Cup trip to Plymouth and Tuesday’s League Two clash with Stevenage at Rodney Parade, Westley continued: “We’re all conscious of where the club is right now.

“We’ve got a game in hand on Tuesday that can get us out of the bottom two and take us up to 21st.

“We’ve worked very hard to get ourselves into a position where we can get out of that bottom two.

“We were eight points adrift when I got here and we can come out of the bottom two and cement ourselves two above that relegation line and start pushing forward from there.

“That’s where our focus is. Our focus as a club is on that.

“Nobody can tell what’s going to happen tomorrow. Stuff happens in life and in football and nobody can tell.

“Football is a funny business and situations emerge and evolve all the time.

“Right now I’m 100 per cent focused on winning the game at the weekend.

“It’s a massive FA Cup tie and we follow that with a game at home on Tuesday night where we can get out of the bottom two and everybody here – the players, myself, the coaching staff – we are 100 per cent focused on the detail, the effort and the work rate and getting things right in order to get to those two victories that are ahead of us.

“And that’s the only thing on our minds.

“Anybody who wants to distract us onto something other than that isn’t acting in the best interests of the football club.

“We are all working really hard, we’re pressurising each other every day to drive more performance out of ourselves.

“We’re working hard as a unit to get better, we’re fighting hard in pursuit of betterment as individuals and a collective.

“And we want to make sure we go there at the weekend in the very best possible condition, which is what everybody who is at the football club right now is focused on."

Westley added: "If I was to ring the chairman up and have a conversation or he was to ring me up and have a conversation, I'd talk to him and he'd talk to me and we wouldn't be talking to the big wide world.

"Most days in a football club I'll ring my staff or pull a player in and have a conversation. Those conversations are not for the big wide world. We talk all the time.

"Football is a passionate environment, people have highs and lows. Equally, I am a manager with nearly 900 games under my belt and I've managed some decent clubs and I know what I'm doing."