ON-LOAN York City keeper Scott Loach has insisted he will be treating the battle against National League relegation no differently to when he was winning England honours.

Less than eight years ago, Loach was facing the likes of Germany’s Mezut Ozil, Sami Khedira, Mats Hummels and fellow net-minder Manuel Neuer in the final of the European Under-21 Championship.

He has also racked up just under 200 appearances at Championship level for Watford, Ipswich and Rotherham but the Nottingham-born, 28-year-old is approaching his latest assignment with equal relish after a solid debut during Saturday’s 1-0 defeat at Dagenham.

Reflecting on his past, while focussing on his present and future, Loach reasoned: “I’ve got Neuer’s shirt and would have it on my wall at home, but my wife won’t let me!

“Quite rightly, she wants pictures of the kids up there instead. It’s all something I can look back on when I’m finished.

“I’m not there anymore but I won’t be treating playing for York City any differently to playing for England. That’s my character and there are no easy games as a keeper.

“Even if you’re playing Sunday League, you still have to keep the ball out of the net. The job is always the same and I still want to get back to where I was.

“The only way I can do that is by playing and I’ve got that platform again, but I know I’ve got to perform because I’ve heard good things about Kyle (Letheren) and Simmo (Luke Simpson) looks brilliant in training.”

As Joe Hart’s understudy in the Three Lions U21 set-up and back-up to Ben Foster, whilst at Watford, Loach also still draws on his experience of working with two of the game’s best performers in his position.

“I think if you put a German nationality next to Joe Hart’s name, he would be rated the best in the world,” Loach claimed. “I’ve worked with him and played against Neuer and I don’t think there’s a lot of difference.

“Ben Foster was also like a big brother to me. I saw him last week and they’ve all looked after me down the years.

“You see different sides to goalkeeping when you’re working with these guys and 80 per cent of it comes down to your mentality. You have to stay switched on and do the basics right, like on Saturday when it was a windy day and I wasn’t involved much.

“You could put an outfield player in goal and he can make saves, but it’s about everything else that comes with it. The best keepers make mistakes, but just get on with things and bounce back and that applies to any level.”

Loach has witnessed successful relegation dogfights first-hand in the past having been on the books at unfashionable Rotherham when they escaped relegation from the Championship two years ago.

He now believes City will need belief and a spot of fortune to emulate that achievement, reasoning: “You need a bit of luck, which we didn’t get when we hit the bar and post at Dagenham but, if you go 1-0 down, you also need to be mentally strong.

“Even though we didn’t get a goal back, we didn’t go on to lose 2-0 or 3-0, which can often happen with struggling teams. We kept them in their half for the rest of the game, which showed there’s belief here.

“As an outsider coming in, Dagenham didn’t look any better than York City and they’re sat in fourth place.”

Prior to being left helpless by Frankie Raymond’s 82nd-minute strike, Loach had made a terrific save to keep out Elliott Romain’s close-range header – a stop that the modest glovesman felt might have been the by-product of a training session put on by City keeper coach Craig Hinchliffe.

“It just hit me and was purely a reaction save,” Loach said. “I’ll pretend I meant it, although we were doing a drill in training where players were just firing shots at me from close in and Hinchy said ‘if you can save one of those, it could be your match-winning save’.”