GRAHAM Westley believes the extra experience of Wycombe Wanderers, Blackpool and Stevenage has been too much for his young Newport County AFC side over the last two weeks.

County have been beaten by all three in successive League Two matches and remain bottom of the table ahead of Saturday’s home clash with Morecambe.

And Westley hopes youngsters like Jazzi Barnum-Bobb, Dan Butler, Josh Sheehan, Rhys Healey, Jack Jebb and Tom Owen-Evans will learn quickly.

“We’ve been beaten by three sides – Wycombe, Blackpool and Stevenage – who are all around the play-off mix,” said the Exiles boss after Tuesday’s 2-0 defeat to his old club Stevenage.

“They are sides who have got experience and know-how and understanding of the game.

“And that has got the better of us but we mustn’t get ourselves too down.

“We were elated on Saturday night when we got that draw at Plymouth [in the FA Cup] in difficult circumstances and we played well.

“As with every young side you’re going to get your ups and your downs.

“And sometimes the downs come immediately after the ups.

“We weren’t as fantastic as we probably thought on Saturday and we weren’t as bad I’m sure tonight when you look at the game and reflect on the chances it could easily have been different.

“It could have been but at the same time our goalkeeper had to do too much and if it wasn’t for him it could have been a bigger scoreline.”

Westley picked out Barnum-Bobb as a player who needs to improve.

He said: “You can’t give a player who’s got 10 or 20 league games the experience of 500 games. What you can do is educate the players.

“You look at Jazzi and his performance in terms of some of the decisions he made and you compare it to Ronnie Henry, who’s won promotions with Luton and with me at Stevenage.

“You can’t give that experience and that know-how to a young player in his first league football.

“You just have to get him to understand. He’s an intelligent lad Jazzi and I’m sure he’ll learn better habits as he goes forward.”