Gary Bowyer says Salford win ‘has been coming’ after easing past Newport

Posted Sunday, August 29, 2021 by PA

Manager Gary Bowyer said confidence is high at Salford as they secured their first victory of the season with a 3-0 defeat of Newport.

The travelling Exiles, who lost 8-0 to Southampton in midweek, conceded after only 38 seconds when Tyreik Wright prodded beyond Joe Day.

Conor McAleny doubled the Ammies’ advantage with a precise finish before strike partner Ian Henderson capped off an impressive opening half-hour when he rounded Day and finished into an open net.

Newport, who missed boss Michael Flynn’s presence in the dugout after his positive Covid test, thought they had a lifeline in first-half added time but Timmy Abraham’s effort was disallowed for handball.

In an uneventful second period, the home side rallied in pursuit of a fourth with Brandon Thomas-Asante striking the post as Bowyer’s side found lift off in League Two.

A beaming Ammies boss said: “Our level of performances, the way we’ve been playing and the process we’re going through, it has been coming for sure.

“We’re delighted it happened. You always want your first win as quickly as you can and we feel we deserved it earlier than what we have but that wasn’t to be and as a result it’s a case of believing in the process and it’ll come and it has done.

“There’s a confidence always. If you’d have seen them this week in training, you wouldn’t have known they hadn’t won a game, they just kept going and as a result, they got their rewards.

“But we’re not overly blessed with numbers so the next three days will be really interesting to see what happens. If we can add one or two more, there’s still a few areas we still need to add to.”

Newport assistant boss Wayne Hatswell was unhappy with his side’s display.

He said: “It was a really disappointing performance and a bad day at the office for everybody.

“We gave ourselves a mountain to climb from the goal they scored in the first 30 seconds.

“I’m disappointed with the manner of a couple of the goals but generally we didn’t defend well enough or play as well as we have done.

“We didn’t expect that kind of a start; we wanted to try and start dominating the possession and when you go one-nil down things change very quickly and we were two-nil down straight after.

“I felt the third goal took us out of the game and once that went in we couldn’t get started again.

“All the travelling and the crazy schedule we’ve had, being away from home, is probably finally catching up but that’s not an excuse. We’re just disappointed because we can do a lot better than what we did.”