PADRAIG Amond netted his tenth of the season for Hartlepool United on Saturday, but was the first to admit reaching double figures counted for little.

Pools were thumped 3-1 at Newport, the team bottom of the Football League who won their first game since November, a run of 12 games without victory.

The Northern Echo:

"I'll only be pleased in a few days about my goal, right now it's not something I'm thinking about at all,’’ he mused. “Losing that game is disappointing.’’

New boss Dave Jones wasn’t impressed by the failure of his side to deal with the terrible pitch and the home side’s tactics and Amond asked: “Do you think Newport are a better footballing team than us?

"Even if you were to ask their players they'd probably say no.

"But the reality is they have taken four points off us this season.

"That's a team below us who have taken more points off us than we have off them, that's very disappointing

"We're now looking behind us this week instead of looking above us.

"Last week when we won the league looks a lot better with some decent fixtures coming up when a couple of wins would put us into a very good position.

"That would have been the ideal scenario but that's not going to happen now.’’

Pools start work on their new training ground at the Racecourse in Durham City from today and Amond is expecting a response in preparation for Saturday’s home game with Yeovil Town.

He said: "It will be a hard week' training now but we'll do our best to put things right.

"The outlook was to win, get up the table.

"It was the same when the old gaffer was here as well, but things just weren't going right for us for whatever reason.

"Essentially, it doesn't matter who is the gaffer, we as players have to do our jobs better.

"A new gaffer can come in and tell us all the right things and we don't do the right things on the pitch we make him look bad.

"We'll get going again on Monday and back to the drawing board and try to build on the momentum of that home game from last week.’’