MICHAEL Flynn insists the pressure is on Hartlepool United rather than his Newport County AFC side as the battle to beat the drop enters the final three games of the season.

Flynn’s men, who host play-off hopefuls Accrington Stanley at Rodney Parade this afternoon, are just one point behind Hartlepool in the League Two table.

And the County caretaker manager believes that Pools, who are at home to mid-table Barnet today, are the team who will be feeling the strain.

“There’s a lot more pressure on Hartlepool; they’ve been sucked right into it,” said Flynn, who has won five of his nine games in charge to cut the gap to safety from 11 points to just one.

“Nobody gave us a chance but we’ve kept digging, clawing and scratching – whatever we could do – to climb to a lot better position.

“And a win on Saturday would make it really interesting because there’s one or two others who have got difficult fixtures who might get dragged into it again.

Cheltenham Town, currently five points clear of the Exiles, go to seventh-placed Blackpool today before hosting Dave Jones’ Hartlepool next Saturday.

But Flynn is fully focused on getting his own house in order following a 6-1 defeat at Plymouth Argyle on Easter Monday.

“We might only need three points to survive or two draws but we might need nine points,” he said.

“We can’t worry about what anyone else is doing.

“We’ve got to do what we’ve got to do to stay in this Football League and that is win on Saturday to start with.

“We’re in with a shout now and with that comes a little bit more responsibility but I’m big enough and ugly enough to handle that,” he added.

“I’ll make sure that it doesn’t affect the players and we’ll be ready to go.

“When I came in we were 11 points behind and now we’re one behind and everyone’s getting disappointed we lost to Plymouth.”

Flynn wants his players to forget about the Home Park horror show and has not made them watch the game back on DVD.

“It was a kick in the teeth but there’s no point dwelling on it. We’ve put it behind us,” he said.

“Plymouth is gone and we can’t change that. It’s in the past but what we can do is affect what we do on Saturday.

“We’ll look at what we did well and what we did wrong in clips but I don’t think there’s any benefit whatsoever in making them sit down and watch that again.

“I hated it as a player. You watch the first 10 minutes and then you switch off and you get nothing from it.

“You all know it was a bad day at the office but for me there’s absolutely no benefit whatsoever in watching 95 minutes of a football match that you want to forget about.

“We had a chat afterwards and we agreed that there’s only one way to answer it – by getting three points on Saturday.”