NEWTOWN travel to Cardiff Metropolitan on Saturday expecting another major test.

The Robins manager conceded his squad had to improve after a poor second-half performance allowed Bala Town to steal victory at Latham Park last week.

Despite being dominant in the first-half the Robins managed just one goal and defensive lapses allowed the Lakesiders to leave with all three points.

“It was not good enough,” said Hughes. “Teams are scoring too easily against us and we are having to work too hard to create chances. We must address that.

“It is all the more frustrating as I felt our first-half performance was as good as we’ve played all season and should have been comfortably ahead really.

“The message was to keep playing like that and take our chances but we had to be better defensively and conceding two goals like that was a big blow.

“After that they defended well and made life hard for us but it was always going to be hard to get back into the game.”

Despite slumping to eighth in the table the Robins manager insisted nobody was panicking and remained confident of causing a shock at second placed Cardiff Metropolitan before plotting the downfall of Carmarthen in the Nathaniel MG Cup quarter-finals on Tuesday.

“We are building the squad and it will take take but we can take positives from each game and try and work on what went wrong against Bala for two big games next week,” said Hughes.