NEWPORT County AFC manager Graham Westley admitted he got his team selection wrong against Wycombe Wanderers and suggested that the Rodney Parade pitch means he may have to pick two different teams for home and away matches.

Wycombe stole three points with an 88th-minute winner from Sido Jombati’s free-kick that ended County’s seven-match unbeaten run and sent them back to the bottom of League Two.

And, while Westley praised the ground staff for ensuring that the match could go ahead after heavy rain saturated the pitch, he now knows that some players will be much more suited to playing away from home with the surface in its current condition.

“I didn’t get it right in terms of selecting the right team to win the game on the surface,” said the Exiles boss.

“We’ve got to work out a way of playing. It was a difficult surface out there and perhaps on reflection the ingredients that you require when you’re playing on that surface in those kinds of conditions are slightly different from the ones I put on the pitch.

“I’ve probably learned what to select and not to select in certain conditions out there, not that we’re blessed with [that many] options.”

South Wales Argus:

Wycombe boss Gareth Ainsworth got it right on the night, according to Westley.

“Their game was about position-based football,” he said. “It was about getting the ball into areas, running hard, being strong at set-plays and their game suited the surface.

“Our game is more fluent probably; our game depends on passing the ball and working the ball from the back and the surface really wasn’t suitable for that.

“We played so well at the weekend and we had that sort of vision of our football in our minds.

“Then we came here and we had to change the way we played. It’s obviously difficult – it’s a different type of game that’s required.

“But we’ve got to adapt to that. It’s our home ground and we’ve got to learn play here.

“I’m going to have to get used to managing a team that’s playing in conditions like this because it ain’t going to go away – it’s our home pitch.”

He added: “I’ve got some working out to do because we’ve got to almost have a game at home and a [different] game away.

“That’s difficult. You’ve got the problem of adapting from one surface to another – a good surface on the one hand and a really difficult one on the other.

“There’ll be times I suppose when this surface is better but there’ll be a lot of times, I’m guessing, when it’s going to be like this.

“It’s not got the greatest reputation and finding a way of winning and making sure I’ve got players at the club who can win in those conditions is the order of the day.

“It’s not as if I’m looking at the bench and thinking there’s tonnes of options to provide more resilience, more set-play capability, more bite.

“The players on the bench are similar probably to the ones out there so we’ve got to do a lot of thinking to find a way of producing results in these kind of circumstances.”

Westley admitted that last week’s FA Cup replay win over Alfreton in extra-time was a warning sign about difficulties at home.

“Let’s be honest,” he said. “We struggled over 90 minutes against a hard-working, gritty and determined Alfreton last week and there were some clues there that were in my mind.

“I just hoped that we could reproduce what we did at the weekend but definitely some of the players are better suited to a better surface, that’s for sure.”

The Exiles now have two games on the road before their next home match against Westley’s former club Stevenage on Tuesday, December 6.

Before that they face an FA Cup second round tie at Plymouth Argyle on December 3 and next up this Saturday is a trip to Blackpool.

“Hopefully the conditions will be better up there,” said Westley.

“I know they’ve had some difficult weather up there and I don’t know what that’s done to their surface but hopefully we can have a better surface at the weekend and we can adapt our game.

“But we mustn’t start making excuses out of the pitch.

“It’s early days, I’m still getting familiar with the environment and we need to make sure we’re better going forward than we were [last night].”

Asked about the ground staff’s hard work, he added: “There’s a lot of work been done to clear the water and drain the surface. Everybody’s worked very hard to produce a surface that we could play on.

“We didn’t want to fall another game behind. We wanted to make sure we got the game played and hopefully get the points won.

“We didn’t win the points but going forward I’m sure we will win plenty of points here at Rodney Parade.”