PADDY MCLAUGHLIN has admitted York City will travel to Fleetwood Town tomorrow with two scores to settle.

The Minstermen dominated the first half-hour of October’s Bootham Crescent meeting between the two sides before going behind to a 36thminute Junior Brown strike.

Steven Gillespie then secured a flattering 2-0 victory late on, leaving the Minstermen without a win or a goal during their last three meetings with the Cod Army, who they followed out of the Blue Square Bet Premier last season.

Northern Ireland under-21 international McLaughlin wants to set that record straight against the 2012 Conference champions and is also keen to bounce back from the 3-0 Boxing Day defeat at Chesterfield.

He said: “We battered Fleetwood for the first half-hour back in October and could have been 4-0 or 5-0 up. We then got hit by a sucker punch just before half-time and ended up losing 2-0.

“But, hopefully, we will put that right and get a result. It will be another tough game but we will be setting out to try to get three points to put Chesterfield behind us.

“It’s good to have a game so close so we can get that defeat out of our system and put things right.”

With the season having now reached its midway point, McLaughlin believes the key to further progress in League Two during the New Year will be finding a level of consistency both during matches and from game to game.

He added: “If we look back over the first half of the season, there have been games where we have come off with a draw thinking we should have won and others that we have lost and should have drawn.

“If you add up all those little points, we could be right up there in the playoffs so. If we can sort that out and be more consistent, we can go up the table and achieve better things.”

The 21-year-old midfielder is also hoping the team can stem the flow of goals being conceded with the Minstermen having shipped 21 in ten matches since their last clean sheet.

Reflecting on a margin of defeat at Chesterfield that he felt was an inaccurate representation of the match, McLaughlin said: “We were different class for 45 minutes but conceding early on in the second half was not ideal and I don’t know what happened after that.

“At 1-0, I thought we were still very much in the game and were making strides towards getting back into it, but they went up the pitch and got two more. Even though the second half was not good enough, I still don’t believe they deserved to beat us 3-0.

“That’s something we have to look at because we seem to be conceding quite a lot. We need to cut that out – especially the avoidable goals – during the second half of the season.”

At the other end of the pitch, McLaughlin insists City will always endeavour to get on the scoresheet no matter how futile a situation might seem.

The visitors had three great chances to net in the latter stages against the Spireites and the former Newcastle reserve said: “Blairy (Matty Blair) had a chance that fell to him and the ’keeper made a save from me, so it’s never too late to get back into a game.

“We have proven over the last year-and-a-half that you can do that any time in a match. If one of those had crept in, you never know what might have happened but it wasn’t our day.”