NEWPORT County AFC boss Justin Edinburgh admits the insane nature of modern day football makes management less enjoyable than it used to be.

The Exiles boss celebrated three years in charge of the Exiles last weekend, making him the 11th longest standing manager in English football.

Despite Saturday’s reverse being County’s first defeat in eight games, a small section of fans barracked some of the Newport players on Saturday after the final whistle.

And while Edinburgh initially refused to be drawn on the matter, in a lively press conference at Spytty Park on Thursday he did admit that he believes the game is heading in a crazy direction, particularly following the sacking of Scunthorpe manager Russ Wilcox.

Despite reviving Scunthorpe and taking them up from League Two by virtue of an incredible 29-game unbeaten run last term, Wilcox has been sacked less than two months into the new campaign.

Edinburgh has confessed he feels some Newport fans have an unrealistic expectation for his side and similarly feels he’s in a ‘damned if I do, damned if I don’t’ scenario in terms of managing expectations at Rodney Parade.

“I said judge us after 12 games, but the fact is, more than likely, after 23 or 24 games, we’ll be in touch with both the promotion and the relegation issues, because this division is crazy and exceptionally close,” he said.

“People get bogged down with league positions; let us take Oxford as an example of that who I will come back to.

“Or take Paul Tisdale. The second longest serving manager in English football and a month ago there was a petition calling for him to be sacked. Now they’ve won six, he’s manager of the month and Exeter are one point outside the play-offs.

“The game has become ludicrous. For me, cliché or not, we can’t look more than one game at a time as a manager, there isn’t a must win game, until it’s to go up or go down at the end of the season.

“Football has gone mad. Russ Wilcox is now unemployed. I can’t get my head around that. Football has gone off the scale.

“If a minority of our own fans were unhappy on Saturday, I find that difficult to reconcile. I don’t want to get too drawn on it, because our fans are fantastic.

“But if you were complaining on Saturday, based on Oxford being in the bottom two, I don’t see that at all, I find it madness that anyone bowled up on Saturday expecting us to win easily.

“Let’s get it right, we are still at the stage of aspiring to a club like Oxford. We don’t even own our own ground.

“We are going to that stadium, they are getting 5000 on average, which would be more like 9000 if they were going well and they probably have a budget that is £500,000 if not more, than ours.

“They’ve got a manager still trying to impress his ideas and we lost 1-0. We had more shots than them, more possession, but we had our chances and though some are disappointed, I’m not going to say sorry because we haven’t battered Oxford.

“They are entitled to their opinion but people moaning about Saturday? I don’t agree with that at all.”

Edinburgh admits the managerial merry-go-round has now reached scary proportions, making him grateful for the stability he has at Newport, even if the job in general is less fun in 2014 than ever before.

“There is zero job safety as proven by Russ Wilcox, the average tenure of a manager is about eight months now,” he said. “Look at Watford as well on manager number five.

“People throw around buzz words like ‘vision’ or ‘ethos’ but how can managers plan ahead nowadays? It’s very unlikely in the modern game you’ll see another manager be at this club as long as I have in the future.

“And financially, there is far more pressure for lower league managers who are out of work.

“It is getting less and less enjoyable, there is no doubt about that.

“The expectations are beyond reachable at times. This club needs to have a vision that is about stability in the Football League. Historically that’s been what this club is about.

“We don’t own our own ground, we are behind on attendances for our budget and we have 1000 fans who can come and go which makes it very hard to plan ahead. Yet for some, we are expected to get promoted.

“But if I point that out, I’m negative! And don’t believe I’m not ambitious are I wouldn’t be living and working in Wales when my family are in Essex if I didn’t believe in the club.

“I believe we can grow this club the right way and in the long-term. I want to win every game and get promoted, but I can’t win can I?

“We lost our first four and if I had said then I want to be promoted I’d have been run out of Wales.

“Football is unstable now and I’m lucky I am at a club where most people understand what we are trying to do.”