Newport County appear to be giving up their Football League status with barely a whimper.
Their 4-0 League Two home defeat against Leyton Orient left County adrift at the bottom, 11 pints from safety.
Manager Graham Westley admitted it was a ‘devastating’ defeat, saying: “Not just the result but the manner of the performance because if you measure a performance in terms of fight and desire and hunger and appetite we were very low in all those commodities.”
“We have to take a long, hard look at ourselves and ask ‘did I do everything I could do to win that football match today?’
“It was a massive opportunity to get ourselves off the bottom but we’ve left ourselves lying firmly at the bottom with a really abject display.”
Newport, who are away against Crewe on Saturday, have earned only one win in their last 20 fixtures and they look doomed to relegation, but Westley said: “I can justify myself, I inherited a team that was losing and right at the bottom of the league and to date, I’ve not been able to turn that around.
“I am the person who has to take the responsibility and flak.
“We are down on the floor, people are kicking us and think we are dead and maybe we are, but next weekend, no one will go onto that path who does not think there is life in us.”
Former Newport manager Warren Feeney, who was sacked in September when County were bottom with six points from nine games, has talked about the club’s plight, saying: “I look at the results and you have to say they’ve not improved, they’ve got worse.
“I know how hard the players work so I want them to stay up but I just can’t see them getting out of it.”
Former Cardiff City player Feeney has been out of work since leaving Newport, but js keen to get back into management and said: “There was a job up north recently but it wasn’t right for me.
“I’ve still got the appetite to get back into the game when the right club comes along.”
