Midfielder Jamie Devitt made his first appearance since the Grimsby Town game against Yeovil on Saturday and we spoke to him at full-time to get his thoughts on a disappointing home defeat.
“It’s a downbeat dressing room at the moment but the only people who can get us out of this is us,” he said. “We all need to stick together, you will always get down after a result, but we can’t keep getting down about it and coming back next week and still being the same.
"We need to pick ourselves up and pick each other up, because there are a few down heads in there. We know it isn’t good enough at the minute.
“We need a reaction, we can’t keep doing this because we’re going to end up slipping down the table, and before you know it we’ll be in trouble. We need to be honest with ourselves and ask ourselves if we’re playing as well as we should be. We need to do the basics right and build from there.
“Nobody enjoys not winning games, we all go home and it does ruin your weekend, and I know that’s the same for the fans. We’ll talk about things but we need to get this home form out of our system.
"We need to have a positive week of training then look forward to the Newport game. We can’t be coming into home games worrying, we need to come and be excited that we’re playing in front of our fans and give them something to get behind us for."
“A lot of things were said in the dressing room after the game but that will stay inside the dressing room," he admitted. "We’ll look back on the game and talk about things we need to iron out, then after that you go out on the training pitch and everything is normal again.
“I can only speak for myself but I don’t think this is down to a lack of confidence. I think if we knew what the issue was we wouldn’t be in this situation, and it’s difficult to know what to say to be honest. It was one of those really frustrating afternoons and we just need to put it right.
“I don’t think there’s anybody that won’t be hurting about the result because we know it’s not good enough and we know it needs turned around."
On having missed out on the previous five games with a knee injury, he admitted that it had been frustrating to have to watch from the sidelines.
“When you’re injured you always look at the matches and think you can make a difference, so it is frustrating when you can’t help the team," he commented. "When I came on I didn’t think I did as well as I should have done, so I know I need to be better next week if I get the chance.
"I gave the ball away too many times and I don’t like doing that, so I’ll look back on my performance and make sure I’m better next week. I’m looking forward to the week of training we’ve got coming up already.
"As players we need to go out and have no fear. Like I said, it’s difficult to know what the problem is, because if we knew what it was we wouldn’t be doing what we’re doing.
“We know it was a low attendance as well, and it will probably be lower next week because we haven’t given anyone any reason to come back and watch. We need to go out and play exciting football to try and get fans to come back to Brunton Park.
“The fans want to watch their team winning and that’s what we want to be doing as players. We want Brunton Park to be bouncing again, because we know what it’s like when there’s six or seven thousand fans here.
"There’s nothing better than playing in front of those fans and winning games. We can understand the boos we’re getting, because if I was paying to watch that I wouldn’t have been happy one bit."
“I don’t think the length of time we’ve gone without scoring at home should get into the players’ heads, but I think it probably is at the moment," he admitted. "It’s really frustrating, but I’ll take some of the blame because I missed that penalty against Tranmere and it’s all come from that.
"I was just hoping something would drop for me at the weekend, but it wasn’t to be. I’ll be doing my best again next week to get in the right places to score a goal because we definitely need one.
“Like I said earlier, there probably is a little bit of fear in home games now, but there shouldn’t be. We’re playing in front of our supporters and they do get right behind us.
"We’ve gone five games without a goal but it still wasn’t every fan who booed us off, because they just want us to do well. It shows that we've got their backing, but we need to get them excited again and give them a reason to come back."
“We know we’ll get out of this because we’ve got a great dressing room," he told us. "We’ll all come in and have a positive week of training and hopefully we’ll get the result we want.
"Newport are a good team but it shouldn’t matter who we’re playing against, we should be playing our best every week. We need to come into the game on the front foot and try and get a positive result."
And on his fitness levels, he told us: “I wanted to start the game but I probably wasn’t ready to, if I’m being honest.
"The manager thought I’d be best on the bench, but I’ll be working hard in training this week so I can hopefully give the manager a headache when it comes to picking the team next weekend.
"I know I can improve a lot from my performance when I came on, and that's frustrating, because I don't like it at all when I haven't performed the way I know I can."
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