Mike Flynn’s mid-season rebuild may result in his finest Newport County achievement yet

Deep in the bowels of Rodney Parade’s Bisley Stand, where Newport County boss Mike Flynn and his opposite number currently hold their makeshift, Covid-safe post-match interviews, a heart-warming memorial to the late Justin Edinburgh adorns a back wall.

The former Tottenham Hotspur defender was manager of the Exiles between 2011 and 2015 and helped guide the club back into the Football League after 25 years in the wilderness, partially explaining why such a vast collection of shirts, photographs and personal messages have been gathered in his honour.

It was not only Edinburgh’s success on the field that made him such a popular figure in South Wales but also the way in which he embraced the club as his own, meaning it was no surprise that he was inducted into Newport’s Hall of Fame in 2019 after his sudden and unexpected passing.

An equally fitting tribute to the impact he had on Newport has been the work done by Flynn, who played under Edinburgh for two and a half seasons, to build on the foundations that he lay the best part of a decade ago.

On this day four years ago, the Exiles were sat second-bottom of the EFL and three points from safety with only five games of the League Two season left to play.

Flynn, who represented his hometown club in three separate spells as a player, had stepped in as caretaker manager just a month beforehand when they were rock-bottom of the League Two table and 11 points below the dotted line.

Three wins from their final five fixtures, that included a last-minute victory against Notts County on the last day of the season, meant Newport survived by the tightest of margins and allowed one of the most successful periods in the club’s history to begin.

Flynn’s side have gone toe-to-toe with Manchester City and Tottenham in the FA Cup in recent years, whilst also knocking Leeds, Leicester and Swansea out of cup competitions as Newport have firmly established themselves as kings of the upset, and only a Tranmere goal in extra-time of the 2019 play-off final denied them promotion to the third tier.

Their 40-year-old manager, who completed his coaching qualifications alongside both Mikel Arteta and Thierry Henry, has been linked with a host of positions at clubs further up the league pyramid, yet he has remained fiercely loyal to the project being developed at Rodney Parade.

This season looked set to be Flynn’s most impressive yet, as the adoption of a back three that included midfield playmaker Matty Dolan being converted into a centre-back saw Newport play some of the most attractive football in the EFL as they raced to the top of the league table and established a four-point lead by early December.

However, expecting the campaign to come to a straightforward conclusion for a club that had gone from competing in the European Cup Winners’ Cup to being bankrupt and without a home ground in the space of a decade in the 1980’s was wishful thinking.

The January transfer window saw nine players arrive at Rodney Parade and nine players depart, with Swansea and Swindon re-calling the talented loan duo of Brandon Cooper and Scott Twine proving to be a particularly painful blow.

Wales under-21 defender Cooper had made it possible for County to play out from defence thanks to his comfort in possession and accurate passing, whilst midfielder Twine had established himself as one of the most eye-catching players in League Two thanks to the seven goals that he scored in the first half of the season, with most of them being spectacular strikes from long-range.

The deteriorating state of the Rodney Parade pitch made it increasingly difficult for the collection of new players to gel whilst also playing expansive football, going some way to explaining a run of two wins in 15 games in late winter that saw the Exiles drop out of not only the automatic promotion spots but also the play-off places.

“How anybody hasn’t been injured on it, I don’t know,

“This is nothing to do with the ground staff or the staff who work tirelessly to get it even in a playable state – or half playable state. They work their socks off

“I am not having a dig at them one bit and I never will because I have seen how hard they work and how much organisation and planning he puts into things. It’s not a slight on them at all.

“But the pitch is the worst I have ever seen it.”

– Newport County manager Mike Flynn speaking to BBC Football about the Rodney Parade pitch in February

This forced Flynn to have a re-think. The new style of play had made his side promotion contenders when he had an almost entirely different set of players on playing surfaces that had been conducive to keeping the ball on the deck, but going back to what had made Newport successful in the past was a viable solution for salvaging the season.

A temporary move to the Cardiff City Stadium for home games against Bradford and Leyton Orient has coincided with a run of only four defeats in their last 12 that has left the Exiles with a place in the top seven in their own hands as the season heads into it’s home straight.

Tuesday night’s goalless draw against fellow play-off contenders Carlisle United was characterised by direct balls forward to target man Ryan Taylor, with the most likely source of a goal in a game that provided only seven shots on target from both teams being the long throws of defender Mickey Demetriou.

This has been typical of Newport’s performances in recent weeks as without Cooper’s ball-playing prowess or Twine’s goal threat from midfield, Flynn has reconstructed the team to make them aggressive in the final third and difficult to break down in defence in a similar style to the one that secured such impressive results in the cup runs of previous seasons.

“It was a hard-fought point and it hasn’t done us too much damage.

“There were some favourable results elsewhere, it is what it is, we can still finish on 80 points and we’ll be trying to get that and finish as high as we can.”

– Newport County manager Mike Flynn

The result against Carlisle worked in the favour of the Exiles as it saw them move above Forest Green Rovers and into sixth in the League Two table, and defeats for both Exeter City and Salford City prevented either from moving above them.

Should Flynn and his players hold on to their place in the play-offs before going on to avenge the heartbreak they suffered two seasons ago at Wembley, even a statue in honour of the local boy-turned-player-turned-manager would feel an insufficient tribute to his contribution to the club’s history.

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