YORK City boss Gary Mills is expecting his players to be crying at the end of the season – but only with tears of relief.

With the Minstermen’s campaign guaranteed to be decided on the final day, regardless of the result from this afternoon’s National League trip to relegation rivals Woking, Mills is expecting an outpouring of emotion when his team, hopefully, celebrate survival in seven days’ time at Bootham Crescent following their home clash against play-off qualifiers Forest Green.

The City chief is basing the assumption on his own experiences as a player when he was a member of the Leicester team that stayed in what is now the Championship at the expense of West Brom in 1991.

Mills was 30 at the time and admitted: “I’ve been here before as a player when it went to the last game and it was out of our hands at Leicester, but we won and West Brom drew at Bristol Rovers to keep us up and all I can remember from that day is every player in the dressing room crying their eyes out because of the emotions and relief.”

The Minstermen supremo also reiterated that securing safety would represent his biggest achievement in football.

He was twice unable to spare past clubs Notts County and Tamworth from relegation, having only taken over the reins in January.

But, after succeeding Jackie McNamara in October, the former European Cup winners has confessed he has never had to work harder to reverse a club’s fortunes.

“The other times I’ve gone down with Notts County and Tamworth were totally different and nothing like this, because it’s been so tough turning us into a team that can win games, which we know we can do now,” Mills reasoned. “Keeping us up would be my biggest success as a manager because of the hard work that has had to be done to put together a squad of players that can keep us up and I don’t want all that to go to waste during the last two games.”

Unlike Leicester, though, Mills is in no mood to count on other teams slipping up.

Braintree and Torquay – the two clubs immediately below his fifth-bottom side in the National League standings – are today facing play-off hopefuls Barrow and Dover respectively, but Mills warned: “There have been some unexpected results and football never surprises me, so we can’t rely on other teams.

“You look at games and think they won’t win, but they do. Torquay, for instance, have got North Ferriby at home in their last game and they’re already down, but they won at Forest Green a couple of weeks ago and you just don’t know when that bit of pressure is on.

“Torquay will probably need to win and, with North Ferriby only playing for pride, they will go out and a bit more relaxed. There’s also Guiseley, Woking and Solihull still involved.

“If Solihull get beaten, they’ve got to go to Guiseley for their last game and I think we’ll be talking a bit differently about the whole situation again tonight.”

Mills added that he will be employing a tried-and-tested method to rouse his players before the vital Woking clash.

“I gave the players two days off after Monday and my job as manager now is to do things that make sure my players go out absolutely fired up and knowing what they’ve got to do,” he explained. “We know how big the game is and I’ll be throwing something into the mix that I’ve done in the past to motivate my players in the right way.”