HAMZA Bencherif hopes scoring in pre-season will lift his York City goal “curse” but admitted that clean sheets still give him more satisfaction.

The 30-year-old centre back had netted 28 times in professional football before he joined the Minstermen from Wrexham 18 months ago.

Since then, he has failed to open his City account during 65 first-team outings but did manage to get on the scoresheet during Saturday’s 1-0 friendly victory over Bradford.

That came as a relief for Bencherif but, with the team only mustering seven shut-outs in 46 matches last term despite conceding just once in their opening four fixtures, keeping the League One visitors Bradford at bay for 90 minutes was or more significance for the former Algerian under-20 international.

“Clean sheets always give me the most pleasure and you’re prouder of them as a defender,” Bencherif declared. “The whole team also dug in for one, so I was really happy with that. B “But, hopefully, I’ve now broken my curse in terms of scoring goals as well because that’s how it’s felt to me, as I’ve normally scored a few goals, but haven’t during the last couple of years.”

Bencherif went on to insist that City must now make the defensive side of their game a key “strength” if the club are to prosper in National League North during 2018/19.

The Minstermen ended last season with just three clean sheets in 36 matches and also failed to keep Northern League Shildon at bay during their opening pre-season outing, before Barnsley ran riot in a 7-1 triumph at Bootham Crescent.

A 1-0 victory over League One Bradford, therefore, pleased centre-back Bencherif, who cited the performance as the barometer for how the team must approach games this season.

He said: “All the lads around us (the defence) did really well (against Bradford) and the spaces and gaps on the pitch were a lot smaller, which makes it quite hard for the other team to find players. We’ve got to take that on board and apply the same principles in every game because we need to be solid this season – that’s the main thing.

“We looked solid against Bradford but didn’t against Barnsley. We’re playing a back four now after playing a back three last season, but I don’t think that makes much difference in terms of how solid you are.

“It’s more about the whole team speaking to each other and keeping tight. If you do that, you will be hard to beat and we desperately need to do that from day one this season and keep working on it, so it becomes a strength.”

While the Barnsley thrashing was a humbling experience at the time, Bencherif went on to argue that it might serve as the Minstermen’s most important pre-season exercise, reasoning: “We improved on the Barnsley game and pre-season is all about fitness and learning from mistakes.

“We talked a lot about that on the training pitch before playing Bradford and tried to correct things. We might have lost the game 7-1, but we probably learned a lot more than we had during the 2-1 win at Shildon.

“You need to play different teams to work on your game in and out of possession and we were a lot better against Bradford and applied ourselves well, while staying disciplined. It was a positive improvement, but we still want to see progress in the next two games (against Leeds and Ilkeston).”

With Tom Allan (knee) and Dan Parslow (infected toe) both sidelined against the Bantams, utility-man Sean Newton slotted in as Bencherif’s central-defensive partner in a back four and the latter would be comfortable if a similar reshuffle is needed come the new campaign.

“You can’t control injuries and the plus is Sean is left-footed, so him playing there gave me the chance to be on the right, which I’m more comfortable with,” Bencherif added. “It balanced things out, which is good.”

Championship Leeds are the next visitors to Bootham Crescent on Thursday night (kick-off 7pm) before the pre-season schedule is wrapped up with a trip to Ilkeston Town on Friday, July 27.

Attention will then switch to City’s league curtain-raiser at last season’s beaten play-off semi-finalists Chorley, where Bencherif believes the team will need to demonstrate true resolve to secure a positive result.

“Chorley will be a big test,” he declared. “It’s not an easy place to go, especially this time of the year when the pitch will be hard and it could be difficult to play on.

“But we have to prepare right and adjust ourselves to play any type of football, so looking strong and together will be the main thing.”