NEWPORT County AFC caretaker manager Sean McCarthy admits that the club desperately needs the morale boost of a new boss to lift the gloom at Rodney Parade.

Warren Feeney was sacked last week as County slumped to the bottom of League Two.

The home clash with Stevenage was then postponed due to a waterlogged pitch and McCarthy oversaw last night’s exit from the Checkatrade Trophy after a miserable 2-1 defeat to a Swansea City under-23 team.

Watching that match from the stands was former Peterborough United manager Graham Westley.

He is the favourite to succeed Feeney and the club is hopeful of making an appointment as soon as tomorrow.

Speaking after the defeat to the Swansea youngsters, McCarthy said: “We’re disappointed and hopefully the new manager comes in because the club needs a pick-up at the moment.

“I don’t know who it is – you’d have to speak to someone on the board.

“But the board have informed me that they are hoping to have someone in place by Thursday or Friday.

“Whether that involves me I don’t know. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

McCarthy believes that the new man will be able to steer the club away from the relegation zone, starting at Colchester United on Saturday.

“We shouldn’t be where we are in the league but we are and we have to concentrate on the league now,” he said.

“We’ll start again on Thursday, train Thursday and Friday and if the new manager is in place by then I’ll sure he’ll have his input.

“Everything is arranged for us to go to Colchester and we’ve got to go again, we’ve got to pick ourselves up and go again.

“We’re bottom of the league at the moment but we’ve also got two games in hand.

“If we pick up a good result away from home, hopefully on Saturday, and win those games in hand then we’re right back up there.

“We’ve just had a long chat with the players and there were a couple of home truths,” added the former Premier League striker.

“I’ve been in the game a long time and I’ve spoken to them about what they need to do to become better players.”

But the new manager will be hampered by injury concerns at the weekend.

“We’re disappointed we didn’t play better and we picked up a few injuries as well,” said McCarthy.

“We had to change our formation three or four times through the injuries we picked up, not just before the game but during the game also.

“Hopefully we’ll have 11 fit players for Saturday. The physio is going to be pretty busy for the next few days.

“Mark Randall is struggling with a slight hamstring [strain], Scot Bennett came off with a pain in his neck – a trapped nerve – and Biggy [Paul Bignot] was struggling with his ankle.

“He had his ankle strapped up but, fair play to him, he carried on.

“So we are struggling with injuries and we had a lot of square pegs in round holes.”

McCarthy says the rules of the Checkatrade Trophy did not help the Exiles.

“We had to start with five players who played our last game or we’d be fined – and we obviously can’t afford to be fined,” he said.

“We had to force players to play and we’ve probably suffered as a consequence.”