John Doolan praises ‘different mentality’ as Accrington ease past 10-man Newport

Accrington manager John Doolan praised the “different mentality” of his side as they ran away with it in the second half to beat 10-man Newport 4-1 in League Two at Rodney Parade.

Stanley moved up to 14th after their biggest away win of the season, but only after a half-time talking to from Doolan changed the direction of the match.

“I thought we got off to a perfect start,” said Doolan. “And then, I’ve got to be honest, I think we were out of sorts in the first half. We didn’t pass it, we didn’t find each other.

“I wanted to get in at half-time and sort a few things out and we did. They were at it, you could see how much it meant to them and we needed to pick the pace up.

“We did that in the second half and we scored three (more) good goals, but it was the will and desire that pleased me most – that belief. We’ve got a different mentality about us.”

The visitors were ahead inside two minutes through Alex Henderson, but failed to build on that fast start and allowed the struggling Exiles to level 10 minutes before half-time through Nathan Opoku.

Christian Fuchs’ men were the happier at the break, but the visitors took advantage of a poor Ryan Delaney clearance to restore their through Isaac Sinclair in the 51st minute.

And County’s hopes of mounting another comeback were all but ended in the 69th minute as Opoku turned from hero to villain when he picked up his second yellow card in the space of four minutes for a high studs-up challenge on Farrend Rawson.

Paddy Madden made certain of the three points with a ruthless finish on 82 minutes and a deflected effort from Isaac Heath made it four in stoppage-time.

Fuchs had insisted before the match that his side were not in a relegation battle – despite being in the bottom two since October – and he was desperately disappointed by the way the second half unfolded.

“It’s hard to justify a game like this,” said the Austrian, whose side remain 23rd.

“Especially when you think with 11 men you’re on top of them and then you give away two gifts, basically. That’s very painful, because other than that, I don’t think Accrington had too much.

“Obviously, we tried to get a little bit more risk at the end of the game and it opened up spaces, but as stupid as it sounds, I think that game should go one direction only, which was for Newport.

“But giving away those two cheap goals at the beginning of each half was just not good enough.”