YORK City have been challenged to prove they can mix it with Sky Bet League Two’s big guns again.

The Minstermen travel to automatic promotion hopefuls Fleetwood today (3pm) after being humbled 2-0 at home by new table-toppers Chesterfield on Tuesday.

But Nigel Worthington’s men have previously drawn at the Spireites’ Proact Stadium home this season and shared the spoils at Burton Albion – another top-seven side – in December.

Second-placed Scunthorpe were also seen off 4-1 at Bootham Crescent earlier this term, and Worthington reasoned: “Fleetwood are trying to chase Chesterfield and Scunthorpe to hang in there, but we have drawn at Chesterfield and Burton this season.

“We have got good results at good teams so there’s no reason why we can’t again.”

Back-to-back meetings with Chesterfield and today’s hosts mean the Minstermen have been pitched against the two clubs with arguably the division’s biggest budgets in quick succession.

But Worthington is not jealous of the pair’s spending power and insisted City should still have been a better match for Paul Cook’s high-flying visitors in their last outing.

He added: “I don’t begrudge Chesterfield and Fleetwood anything. They are in the position they are in as clubs and good luck to them. I work very closely with the chairman here and there is nobody works harder than him to make the club better.

“We know what position we are in and, ultimately, we could go to Manchester City, Manchester United or Chelsea and get beaten by five, six or seven and I would live with that as long as the players had given it an honest go.

“On the whole, our players have done that this season but we were not ourselves the other night and we were second best to a good team.

“It disappointed me that we didn’t lay a glove on them or put a mark on the game football-wise to say ‘York City are here, you are at our place and we will make a game of it’, so we need to put that right.”