Questions were being asked of players, head coach Dave Hughes, owner Huw Jenkins and everyone else connected to Newport County at the weekend as the Exiles fell back to the foot of the Football League.
"It's all questions you associate with a team and club that is at the bottom of the league. That's where Newport County are, and this performance showed all of the reasons why."
The damning verdict of former Newport defender Jason Perry on BBC Radio Wales summed up the club's grim 2-0 defeat to relegation rivals Cheltenham Town at Rodney Parade.
Having finally halted their wretched run of 11 games without a win in all competitions - with 10 of those being defeats - by beating Cardiff City in the EFL Trophy and then Accrington Stanley in the league, Saturday's meeting with the Robins represented a real opportunity for a Newport side that finally showed they may be up for the fight.
But their showing swiftly brought fears of relegation back to the forefront of the minds of the Newport faithful.
Hughes felt the game should have ended goalless and cited his side's mistakes as the reason that Cheltenham left south Wales with all three points.
It typifies how blunt the Exiles were as they managed just two efforts on target, and desperately struggled when it came to creating anything clear cut. The fact this was against a side, albeit one that has shown some mettle since the appointment of Steve Cotterill as boss, who were rock bottom of the table before kick-off served as a crushing blow.
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Indeed, Newport's closest effort saw Kai Whitmore hit the post. That aside, there was virtually nothing to get excited about in the final third.
In the manager's defence, he is without a host of players including Matt Smith, Nathan Opoku, Liam Shephard, Tom Davies, Matt Baker and Keenan Patten - and that list increased as Jaden Warner was forced off against Cheltenham.
But Saturday still proved far too concerning.
Some of the aforementioned questions raised by Perry were put directly to boss Hughes in the aftermath of Saturday's loss, and while the manager has continued to stress he remains firmly up for the battle that lies ahead, it feels as though the pressure on the 47-year-old has been ramped up one notch further this week.
"I don't wake up every morning worrying whether I'm going to be here tomorrow," he said.
"The reality of it is, we need to win games, and we're not.
"Whatever decisions that people make, then they'll make them."
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Saturday's trip to Harrogate Town represents another chance to lock horns with a side that have had a testing start to their league campaign, with the Sulphurites just six points above the Exiles with 13 games played.
That fixture is followed by an FA Cup first round clash with League Two promotion hopefuls Gillingham - who beat Newport 3-1 in September - and a league fixture with leaders Walsall.
Harsh questions will continue to be asked of all at the club if Newport do not manage to claim a positive result at the weekend, and certainly if they produce another flat showing on the pitch.
And whether or not Hughes is still the man at the helm following this testing run of fixtures remains to be seen, but regardless of who sits in the dugout, the challenge ahead is a daunting one.
With limited resources, Michael Flynn always prioritised making Rodney Parade a fortress, or at least a place where opposition teams knew they were in for a grind of an afternoon.
But that feeling has evaporated entirely given that Newport are winless in nine games on home soil under Hughes and, in fact, have not won a single competitive fixture on their own patch since thumping next opponents Harrogate 3-0 in March, a combined sequence of 14 home matches without a victory.
Where Newport go from here remains to be seen. But it's abundantly clear that something needs to change, and rapidly, if the Exiles are to stand any chance of salvaging their season.
