NEWPORT County midfielder Lee Minshull admits the Exiles will be on a double revenge mission at the Sixfields Stadium today.

The Exiles are determined to get back to winning ways after a disappointing 4-0 reverse at Cambridge United last time out.

And having been beaten, unluckily, by the Cobblers in their first away match as a League Two club last term, Minshull admits the Exiles have a double motivation to bounce back quickly.

“It’s been a bad week for us, we haven’t had many but you can’t make too many excuses for a 4-0 defeat, we haven’t been here too many times this season,” he said.

“We want to put it right as soon as we can and it reminds us how hard it is to pick up wins in this division as no-one is just going to give it to you. We need to bounce back as quickly as possible.

“Previously when we’ve lost games we’ve bounced back and got on winning runs again and we need to do that again.

“The Luton result was an example, we bounced back and we look at games and think ‘we should have picked up points there or we were lucky there’ you always reflect on results but we know last week we weren’t good enough.

“We can also think back to the game last season. It was the second league game and we produced a great performance and probably didn’t get the rewards we deserved.

“That was a harsh lesson, quickly and we learned about not taking our chances. It was a good lesson to learn quite early on.”

Minshull believes the players can’t use the fact manager Justin Edinburgh was linked with the vacant Gillingham job as an excuse for last week.

“The players weren’t distracted by the talk linking the gaffer with Gillingham, I don’t think so,” he said.

“There is always going to be speculation when you are doing well, be that players or the manager and it is part of our job not to get concerned by that. Personally, I don’t think it had any impact.

“If things are going wrong tactically or whatever you can change it, but on Saturday we just weren’t good enough.”

Minshull is also acutely aware that he will need to improve on his own performance to stay in the County team.

“In midfield the pressure to perform this season is big, when you’re playing you have to grab the opportunity,” he said.

“This season I’ve played a lot and I’ve been quite happy with my performances but you know things can change quickly.

“It’s more than the 11 on the pitch, the gaffer also talks about the group and we need to all be pulling in the right direction.”