SATURDAY’S 4-0 win at Forest Green Rovers was Michael Flynn’s 25th league match as manager of Newport County AFC and with 14 victories he has made a better start than any of his predecessors in the last 40 years.

Flynn’s remarkable record since replacing Graham Westley in March is now 14 wins, four draws and seven defeats in League Two.

He celebrates his 37th birthday today hoping to add to the 46 points his side have earned from a possible 75 when they take on Colchester United at Rodney Parade.

Flynn will be desperate to avoid the fate of Westley, who turned 49 on March 4 when the Exiles suffered a 4-0 home humbling by Leyton Orient.

He was sacked five days later and County have not looked back since.

Flynn, Wayne Hatswell and Lennie Lawrence have totally transformed the club in a little more than seven months – from relegation certainties to genuine play-off contenders.

He may still be a rookie boss but Flynn’s record so far compares very favourably to the great managers in County’s 105-year history.

In his first 25 games in 1977 Colin Addison, who guided the club to the first Great Escape, earned 11 wins, three draws and 11 defeats.

Converted to three points for a win, that amounts to 36 from a possible 75.

Addison’s successor Len Ashurst went one better with the equivalent of 37 points (10 wins and seven draws) from his first 25 games but still nine points short of Flynn’s total.

I’ve not counted managers who were in charge before the Exiles reached the Conference South as the standard of competition below that level would make comparisons unfair.

Since 2005 Peter Beadle (sis wins and six draws) managed 24 points from his first 25 games and Dean Holdsworth took 30 points (seven wins and nine draws) in 2008-2009.

Justin Edinburgh (eight wins and six draws) also won 30 points from the first 75 on offer and Warren Feeney clocked up 26 (seven wins and five draws).

Terry Butcher, John Sheridan and Graham Westley never made it to 25 league games in charge but Westley came closest, earning 19 points from 24 matches.

By my calculations you have to go back as far as Billy Lucas, who took over as player-manager at Somerton Park in December 1953, to find any County manager who can match Flynn’s start to life in the dugout.

That’s not to say that we can anoint him as the club’s greatest manager of course. Not yet anyway.

South Wales Argus:

The likes of Holdsworth and Edinburgh (above) have promotions with the Exiles on their CV, albeit at lower levels.

And, in his second spell in charge, Addison’s Ironsides were within a whisper of promotion to the second-tier as they finished fourth in Division Three in 1983.

But Ashurst, who would go on to win promotion and the Welsh Cup in 1980 and reach the quarter-finals of European Cup Winners’ Cup the following year, retains his number one spot for now.

There was plenty of conjecture last week when it was revealed that County had made their best start to a Football League season since their early 1980s heyday.

Flynn suggested that his current team had the potential to match the feats of those sides featuring stars such as John Aldridge and Tommy Tynan.

“It’s down to the boys. They’re the drivers of their own careers,” said the Exiles boss.

“I’ll help them as much as I can but they put in the hard work, they’re dedicated, they live right and if they keep doing that they’ve definitely got a chance of moving on or pushing on as a team.

“That’s obviously what I want. I want us to go together and go up or have a successful season.

“But they’ve got a little bit of a way to go before they catch the Tynans and the Aldridges.”

Flynn knows that he too has a little way to go before he can catch the Addisons and the Ashursts (to continue football’s annoying habit of pluralising everything).

But it was a measured response from a manager who is still learning his trade.

Flynn has enjoyed a dream start to his coaching career and he, Hatswell and Lawrence deserve all the praise that is heading their way.

They will be well aware that the hard part is sustaining that success and riding out the inevitable bad patches.

For now, though, every long-suffering County fan should really savour the start of something special at Rodney Parade.