YORK City's new assistant manager John Schofield believes the club's players must aim to be the best in five different areas to succeed in Sky Bet League Two.

Schofield has been promoted from the division twice as a coach with Gillingham in 2013 under Martin Allen and, at Scunthorpe 12 months later, as current City chief Russ Wilcox's number two.

Following those experiences, the Barnsley-born 50-year-old has identified fitness, strength, organisation, football ability and dead-ball situations as the key components to master for any aspiring challenger.

He said: "You've got to try and tick all the boxes and, if you're the fittest team in the league, you give yourself a chance. Then, you've got to look to be the strongest and the best organised.

"Along with that, you want to be the best footballers and the best at set plays, so we will be looking to instil all those qualities in pre-season."

Schofield added that flexibility is another vital part of a winning club's armoury and reckons that the Minstermen's current group of players are capable of combining an attractive style of football with a more robust approach when needed.

"I believe there are goals, footballers, battlers and enthusiasm in the team," the ex-Doncaster and Mansfield midfielder reasoned. "To achieve success at this level, you have to be athletic, consistent and able to play, but you also need a couple of different ways of playing.

"It can't all be pretty-pretty or hammer and tongs all the time. I think you need the players who can do both and I believe we have that at the moment, which means you can change the way you're playing without changing personnel at times and that's a massive advantage because you can even do it for ten minutes in a game if you need to and then revert back."

Schofield is also encouraged by the amount of experience at Bootham Crescent with seven players having made more than 250 professional appearances despite John McCombe becoming the first in the squad to hit 30 last month.

Skipper Russell Penn (449) has the most outings to his name, followed by Keith Lowe (375), Anthony Straker (335), McCombe (325), Michael Coulson (282), Luke Summerfield (268) and Emile Sinclair (258) with Schofield reasoning that they can set the example for the rest of the playing staff.

"Every club wants to strengthen in a couple of areas at this stage of the year and we are no different but, if you look down the spine of the team, we've got players with good experience who are a good age with a lot of games under their belt," he explained. "There are some proper men in there and some good characters, which is a massive plus at any club.

"We've got older lads who want to do extra work in terms of their injury prevention and conditioning sessions, which can be laborious but they've bought into it because they know it will extend their careers by three or four years. When they are doing that, the others then follow suit."

Schofield went on to express how impressed he was by the McGill's family vision for the club as majority shareholders.

"The enthusiasm of the chairman and his family is really refreshing because I'm the same," he pointed out. "My glass is always half full if not overflowing and I want to work for similar people.

"There's a process in place of getting to where the chairman wants to be and it involves longevity and laying foundations to build on, which is good and, by maintaining the club's league status last season and moving to a new stadium after the next one, they are being put down."