YORK City’s new manager Martin Gray is hoping to bring in three players before Saturday’s home match against Brackley.

Gray, who held his first training session and press conference today, also wants to improve the fitness levels of his inherited players and insisted that automatic promotion should still be a target for the club.

City currently trail top-two teams Harrogate Town and Salford City by 11 points but, on his plans to freshen up Bootham Crescent, the former Darlington boss said: “There are some good players here and the position in the table is still healthy.

“I thought York were outstanding in the first half when I came here with Darlington in August and we could have been three or four down, but managed to stop the ball going into our net. They also had a great result at Salford and I think there’s a good strong nucleus to the squad, but there is room for improvement in certain areas that we’ve identified.

“One is we’ve got to improve the fitness levels in the building. Some players were blowing in our first training session and they shouldn’t have been doing.

“It’s our jobs now to get them into better shape because, over 90 minutes, you have got to have the best fitness levels. As a full-time professional, you have pride yourself on that.

“We’re also looking at certain positions that need strengthening and we’ll be working hard to get one, two or three players in before the weekend. I know this league and the one above very well and we’re looking to get the right faces in to move the club forward again.

“I think we need an injection of energy so I can put my stamp on things. But there are 90 points still to play for, which is a lot to go at.

“We’ve got milestones in terms of where we want to be at the end of October and at the start of the new year. We want to be in the play-offs then and challenging for promotion.

“The club can’t just be in the mix - we’ve got to get promotion.”

Gray went on to suggest that City fans might witness a return to 4-4-2 football – a system that his predecessor Gary Mills rarely used during either of his two spells at Bootham Crescent.

On his tactical outlook, the ex-Sunderland and Oxford midfielder added: “At Darlington, we were very much an attacking team.

“We tried to have a foundation of keeping clean sheets and always did well in a 4-4-2 formation. That doesn’t mean we will go that way, because you have to have the right personnel, but I want us to get on the front foot and play with energy and belief.”

Despite leading Darlington to three promotions since taking charge in 2012 and making last term’s National League North play-offs only to be prevented from contesting them due to a ground issues, Gray also declared he had no regrets about making the switch to North Yorkshire.

Outlining the motivation behind handing in his resignation at Darlo, Gray explained: “You can only go so far with certain things and I didn’t take any convincing to come here. To take an opportunity with a club of this size and its special fan base was the right thing to do at this time in my career.

“The challenge I have in front of me is exactly what I need. This is a Football League club and it’s mine and Dave (Penney)’s job to take it back there, so I have one thing in mind this season, which is to get promotion.

“I had to do a bit of everything at Darlington, but here there’s everything in place from ground staff to the chief executive, which allows me to focus on preparing the team for Saturday. When I came here with Darlington, there were 4,000 fans and I felt it was like a proper Football League game, which we’ve got to get back to and bring the good times back.”

On renewing his relationship with new sporting director Penney, who he assisted when the latter was manager at Darlington and Oldham, Gray pointed out: “Dave is a Yorkshireman who understands what the club, city and community are all about.

“We fall out and argue with each other, which is important, but we know how each other works and our work ethic together is immense. I think this place needs some real hunger, desire and stones turned over that might not have been.”

Having been recommended for the job by ex-England manager Steve McClaren, Gray will now look to invite the former Nunthorpe School pupil in to take charge of occasional training sessions.

“Both myself and Dave, who played with Steve at Derby and Oxford, know him well,” the Stockton-born 46-year-old admitted. “I joined Oxford just as he was leaving, but I mainly know him through Malcolm Crosby, who worked with him at Middlesbrough.

“Steve came to Darlington and did some training sessions for me and I’d like him to do the same here, although he’s living abroad now, so we might need to pay for his flights! He’s somebody who I can pick up the phone and call from a recruitment point of view.

“He’s a York boy and, when I first found out there might be a chance of coming here on Saturday night, he felt it would be an amazing opportunity.”

Along with McClaren, Gray has other managerial mentors that will be familiar to City fans, having been given his first break as a player at Sunderland by Bootham Crescent promotion-winning pair Denis Smith and Viv Busby.

“Den was fantastic to me,” Gray confessed. “He took me out of non-League football at the age of 19 and I also went with him to Oxford.

“I learnt so much off him and Malcolm (Crosby), as well as Viv, who was a great man-manager when I was coming through. I went on to work with Peter Reid and Terry Butcher as well, so you learn bits off all these people and put your own take on it.”