NEWPORT County AFC boss Terry Butcher has apologised to supporters for the Exiles’ abject display against Crawley.

Jimmy Dack’s returned to Rodney Parade as Mark Yates’ side smashed County 3-0 in a horribly one-sided affair that didn’t see the Exiles muster a single shot on goal for over 80 minutes.

“We went to Carlisle and got a great result and then seemingly brought home a load of strangers, because that’s how we played,” he said.

“There was nothing like the tenacity, togetherness and determination that we’ve shown and to do it in front of our fans as well, makes it worse.

“Fair play to Crawley, they dominated the game and it could have been more than three, we were lucky in that regard.

“When the fourth official announced four minutes I was pleading for him to make it one minute.

“I’m at a loss to understand how we go from the tough resilience we showed on Saturday to that display tonight.

“I can only apologise to the fans, they are used to seeing us play some decent football and they’ll have expected a much, much better performance.

“It was like we picked up a bunch of strangers on the M6 and they played like it.”

Butcher believes the Exiles have shown they can perform far better, despite being rooted to the bottom of League Two with just one win this season in all competitions.

“They’ve (the fans) seen us away in the last two matches, seen our resilience and toughness, but that wasn’t there tonight,” he explained.

“The back three had their hands full, but we never got hold of the ball, we never passed it anything like how we can do and had no shots on target at all until latterly when we were 3-0 down.

“It’s not about where Crawley are in the table, it wouldn’t have mattered, it’s about where we are and what we do and to lose 3-0 in that manner, to any team, you have to be extremely disappointed.

“We were second best all night. I can’t complain about the result, I’m glad it was only 3-0.

“Our players have shown what they can do and shown what they can’t do and we want the former, not the latter.

“If we get the former on Saturday and in the future it’ll be fine. It’s a bit like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. It was very like that.

“The fans saw Saturday and the game before that, they know we aren’t getting turned over every game, but this was the worst performance and worst result at a time with the takeover.”

Butcher insists Tuesday represented County’s lowest point, now or in the future and hinted at plenty of selection changes to come.

“There is a team there, we’ve seen that, but this was a very bad display. As far as I’m concerned it can’t get worse than this, there is no way we can play that badly again on Saturday,” he said ahead of a tough visit of Exeter.

“We’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly and that was the ugly, far worse than Plymouth (another poor display), but it’s the same thing, we have to put this game away and move on.

“I could make wholesale changes, I had a good bench to choose from on Tuesday. In terms of the team on Tuesday, if I could’ve you’d have wanted to take off eight, nine, ten players.

“This was an extremely bad day at the office, but we’ve had good ones as well.

“We have to pick ourselves up.

“The worst thing is it was tough to see coming.

“We had a good result at Carlisle and Dagenham; we had players coming back, a stronger bench.

“And there were no surprises. We knew how Crawley would play, we knew the line-up, what they’d do and yet we didn’t combat them and didn’t assert ourselves on the game.”

Butcher admits his hands currently remained tied in terms of recruitment.

“Someone said to me we’ve had a lot of money from the Regan Poole transfer and not spent it, well I can nip that in the bud straight away, because it’s not the case,” he said.

“We have tried to get experienced players in, but it’s extremely difficult, financially.

“It’s not about getting more players in, it’s about the players that we have here. We need to get the best out of them and certainly didn’t do that on Tuesday.”