MANAGER Graham Westley is pleased to have an uninterrupted week on the training pitch after a hectic first six weeks in charge of Newport County AFC.

County have had four Tuesday night games since Westley was appointed and, after Saturday’s 4-1 defeat at Blackpool, the manager says his players will benefit from a break from midweek matches.

It gives Westley a full week to prepare for the FA Cup second round trip to Plymouth Argyle.

And it means there is more time to improve certain players’ fitness levels and more time for others to recover from injury.

“I’m delighted that there’s no midweek game,” said the Exiles boss.

“We’ve put a lot of energy and a lot of effort into the last few weeks.

“It’s clearly taken its toll on one or two. Lads like [Josh] O’Hanlon and [Jack] Jebb have not had a lot of football and going Saturday to Tuesday doesn’t give you the chance to do the right type of work in terms of pushing their levels along.

“We have one or two who are lacking match legs; we know that O’Hanlon, Jebb and [Mark] Randall haven’t had a lot of football.

“And [Abdoulaye] Meite has been with us for two or three weeks now but he’s only two or three weeks into his pre-season really.

“It’s been a hard period and it’s finished really disappointingly,” he added.

“But we’re a game in hand to come off the bottom and get ourselves back into the mix and that’s a positive response over the last few weeks.”

That game in hand comes at home to Westley’s old side Stevenage on Tuesday, December 6, and he hopes to have some key men back from injury by then.

“Stuff happens in football,” he said. “When you’re at the bottom you’re there for a reason.

“We’ve not been the most fortunate. We’ve got a lot of experienced lads on the sidelines – [Joss] Labadie and [Scot] Bennett as an example.

“There are some big players in this squad missing and we have got a lot of young lads on the pitch.

“But I think we’ve had a good response from the group of players over the last few weeks.

“They’ve shown that with the right selection – the right players out there – there is the ingredients to win games.”