Newport County v Crawley Town preview: Reds look to extend good record at Exiles

Crawley Town’s penultimate away game of the season is a trip to South Wales to face Newport County on Tuesday night.
Action from Crawley Town's home game against Newport County back in December. Picture by Jamie Evans ©UK Sports Images LtdAction from Crawley Town's home game against Newport County back in December. Picture by Jamie Evans ©UK Sports Images Ltd
Action from Crawley Town's home game against Newport County back in December. Picture by Jamie Evans ©UK Sports Images Ltd

The Red Devils have a decent record at Rodney Parade, not losing there since 2018.

Considering how poor away form has been for Crawley in recent seasons this is a good record and they’ll be looking to extend this run on Tuesday evening.

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Although the away form has been bad in past seasons, it’s been much improved this season, shown perfectly by Crawley’s fantastic display in the 2-0 win at Bradford last Tuesday.

This game had an excellent display from both centre backs Jordan Tunnicliffe and Joe McNerney and that can be said also in the games against Southend and Cheltenham, which has resulted in Crawley picking up three consecutive clean sheets.

Credit must also go to full backs Archie Davies and Nick Tsaroulla, who have also been excellent at keeping teams at bay, creating a really strong back four.

The whole team looks like they’ve picked themselves up and improved from the wobble they were on before, as Crawley look to finish the season as strongly as possible.

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Tuesday night will be a big one for Crawley as a win would draw them level on points with their opponents, who currently occupy the final play-off position.

The Exiles will be looking to shrug off Crawley and keep hold of that play-off place, with the chasing pack closing in on them.

Newport got off to a flying start to this League Two campaign and were in and around the top of the table right up until the New Year, where they started to drop off.

Despite this, they still have a play-off place but have only won one of their last seven games, with this being an impressive 1-0 win over Bolton.

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On Saturday they lost out 1-0 to Cambridge United, who subsequently went top of the league.

The blip has put Newport in with a chance of dropping out the play-offs if they don’t start picking up wins urgently.

They’ll certainly find it easy to get themselves up for the game with so much at stake at the business end of the season.

They have some experienced EFL pros in their team, such as Nicky Maynard, Kevin Ellison and Joe Ledley who are all certainly very talented players who can cause Crawley many problems.

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The attacking threat Newport pose on paper is very strong with Maynard, Dominic Telford, Ryan Taylor and Padraig Amond all being very good strikers at this level.

They’ll have to break down a Crawley defence in good form at the moment and this should make for a very entertaining clash between the sides.