BLUES boss Phil Brown felt a lack of experience and inability to deal with the conditions led to his side’s disappointing 3-1 defeat at Newport County on Saturday.

The Shrimpers were outplayed by their Welsh hosts as they sunk to a second successive defeat.

And Brown put that down to Newport being more used to their surroundings.

“None of my team have played here before and we were undone by a good team who knew how to play the conditions better than we did,” said Brown.

“The pitch was cutting up and they would have been used to that as well as the environment and the atmosphere inside the stadium.

“When you’re against that you need experience in the back four and we were missing John White and Mark Phillips who we had to replace with young lads.

“When you’re without key players you don’t realise what you’re missing until they’re out but I think we beat ourselves if the truth be told.”

Brown, who revealed he came close to making three substitutions at half-time, was disappointed by his side’s dodgy defending.

But he was full of praise for Daniel Bentley who pulled off a string of fine saves in the second half.

“I thought we had the best player on the park in Dan,” said Brown.

“He could have done better for the first goal but he recovered from that and stopped it being five or six.

“But I thought we were too easy to play against and that’s not like us so I’m going to have to get to the better of this.”

However, despite his disappointment, Brown also insisted his young side – which had an average age of 22.9 – would learn from the experience.

“The best way for them to get better is to blood them in games like this but one or two of them found it difficult out there,” said Brown.

“I’m not going to bemoan the likes of Ryan Auger though because he had a decent debut.

“But unfortunately he won’t remember it with too many good thoughts and we now need to make sure we do better against the other promoted team, Mansfield, on Friday.”