Newport County boss Coughlan warns of 'toughest' League Two season
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Newport boss Graham Coughlan jokes about joining fire service after his managerial career
Newport County manager Graham Coughlan says "the landscape has changed" in League Two this season.
Wrexham are the current promotion favourites with the bookmakers, whilst Stockport and Notts County have also invested in their squads.
Coughlan has a more modest budget after the Exiles posted a loss of over £1.2m for the year ending 30 June 2022.
He says "outperforming the budget" is their target this season, but warns that things will be difficult.
"Unfortunately, we're going into the League Two season which is probably the toughest season that I've ever come across.
"We're into the realms that I've never seen before when you see some of the finances and some of the things happening.
"We've now got a League Two team flying off to the United States, we've got League Two teams going across to Asia, we've got League Two teams flying all over the continent in pre-season.
"Some of those things never ever happened before in League Two so the landscape has totally changed, it's totally different."
Newport begin the new campaign at Accrington on Saturday and are set to be without last season's top scorer Omar Bogle.
He scored 19 goals last term but has suffered with quad and hamstring issues in pre-season.
"Omar has not trained with us, he's picked up a little niggle.
"We can throw him out tomorrow but if there's any risk, I'm not going to chuck him out, I'm not going to risk him.
"Short-term pain for long-term gain, I'd rather have Omar long-term than short-term."