NEWPORT County were off the pace as they slipped to a 2-1 defeat by Leyton Orient at the Breyer Group Stadium on Saturday.
Here are the talking points from County’s first defeat in five League Two outings…
Performance levels drop
County’s display, for whatever reason, was nowhere near the same as that which they gave against Swindon Town the previous Saturday.
They seemed to lack cohesion going forward and weren’t as watertight at the back as they head been a week earlier.
Replicating the Swindon performance every week isn’t a realistic expectation, but they will know it should have been better in London.
Early setbacks didn’t help
Losing one player in the warm-up isn’t that uncommon, but losing two certainly is, and it’s more than likely the disruption caused by the withdrawals off captain Joss Labadie and centre-back Ryan Inniss did have some effect on the team.
Switching from three centre-halves to a flat back four came as a result of losing Inniss to a calf problem, while missing the unwell Labadie is always going to show.
Matt on a roll
One of the positives to take from the game was another goal – a third in as many matches – for Jamille Matt.
He may well have got two on the day had he connected properly with a corner while the scores were level at 0-0.
But it’s important for a side to have a striker finding the net regularly, although he’d have taken not scoring and County getting the three points.
King shows his class
Keeper Tom King made three superb saves in the first half to keep County in the game for a lot longer than they perhaps should have been.
Couldn’t have done much for either Orient goal as Ryan Haynes struggled to cope with Marvin Ekpiteta for the first and Ruel Sotiriou got away from Robbie Willmott for the second.
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