NEWPORT County AFC manager Michael Flynn was frustrated to see his side go down to a 1-0 defeat at Plymouth Argyle but keen to take the positives from an encouraging display.

Former Exiles loan star Tyreeq Bakinson scored the only goal of the game in the fifth minute – from an offside position, according to Flynn.

And County missed a number of chances before and after the hosts were reduced to 10 men when captain Gary Sawyer was shown a straight red card for taking out dangerman Jordan Green five minutes from time.

“It’s very frustrating,” said Flynn. “It’s come down to an offside goal and a host of missed chances and missed opportunities.

“I’ve said it all season, really. We’ve got to be on the move in the box and anticipate things, instead of just waiting for it and hoping it drops in your lap.

“One of the things we try to work on is the anticipation of things and if we’d done that, we would have scored a couple today.

“I can’t fault their effort or the way they played. In the second half, we played them off the park.

“We’ve had far more shots than them, but they’ve got the three points.

“And, give credit where it’s due, they’ve dug in and it’s the sign of a good team that they picked up three points without deserving them.

South Wales Argus:

“I would have rather played awful and won 1-0,” he added.

“But there are so many positives. The football we played today was exceptional and it goes to show that on decent pitches we usually play a lot better.

“There are loads of positives but it’s frustrating that we’ve lost the game.

“It’s never nice to lose a game but, if we are going to lose a game, you want it to be in the right manner and today we did that.

“We believed in ourselves, we stuck to the game plan and it was just a lapse from a corner.”

Flynn was critical of the performance of referee Ollie Yates and his officials in front of a 10,000 crowd at Home Park.

“The goal was slightly offside,” he said. “I’ll also say that I didn’t think theirs was a red card.

“I thought it was a yellow card. I didn’t think he deserved a red card so there were a couple of baffling decisions.

“And at the end he was supposed to add on the 30 seconds for each yellow card but he blew up dead on the four minutes.

“There was an extra minute to play when the ball was in their box so it was one of those games.”

County also lost full-backs Ryan Haynes and Ashley Baker to injury and both are doubtful for Tuesday’s Leasing.com Trophy tie against Leicester City under-21s at Rodney Parade.

Read more: Plymouth Argyle 1 Newport County 0 - match report from Home Park