NEWPORT County AFC’s fourth consecutive victory on Saturday saw them move into the automatic promotion places in League Two.

The club’s sustained success in recent years is great news for County and for the city of Newport as a whole.

Just as welcome at the weekend was the news that the match against Portsmouth was virtually trouble-free.

There were a handful of arrests but, as usual and as we highlighted in this column last week, the vast majority of supporters at the match were there to enjoy the game.

Whether the tiny minority of non-supporters who sometimes turn up at football matches purely to cause trouble were dissuaded because of the increased police presence, or whether the security operation was an overreaction to a perceived threat is impossible to say.

The police are in a no-win situation.

If they had policed the event with small numbers and trouble had flared, they would have been criticised.

That the day was almost trouble-free but featured a large number of police officers in attendance leads to accusations of them being heavy-handed.