YORK City boss Russ Wilcox is making plans to carry on playing 3-5-2 next season.

The Minstermen secured their Football League status with an unbeaten run of four wins and two games after switching to the system following a post-mortem into the 1-0 home defeat to Bury last month.

Defeats have followed in the last two games, when the likes of Josh Carson and Dave Winfield have been missing, but Wilcox has admitted that his recruitment plans for this summer will be influenced by an intention to stick with the formation.

Ahead of tomorrow's season-ending clash at Portsmouth, the Minstermen chief said: "I've always felt the key to being successful in League Two is being good in both boxes and, in the games I have been able to put out the team I wanted to in this formation, performances have been good in that respect. I also like the fact that the system gives you three in midfield because a lot of teams employ that now, so you can match them up in there and not get overrun.

"Unlike 4-3-3, it allows you to keep two strikers at the top end of the pitch as well, which I think is important. The players deserve credit for how they have adapted to the change and it suited certain personnel like David Winfield and Michael Coulson, who can be more effective in a central position.

"Bury at home was a huge low, even though they are one of the best teams in the league, because it came on the back of some other disappointing results. It was a tough game and it was all about how we responded to that afterwards.

"We knew we weren't far away performance wise - not fantastic, but OK - and the change in formation was key. Big players then came to the fore right through the spine of the team."

Marvin McCoy and Winfield will both return to City's squad on the south-coast.

The former missed last weekend's 2-0 defeat to Newport after attending the birth of his child on Saturday morning, while Winfield has now served his three-match suspension.

"Marvin is back with us after becoming a father," Wilcox explained. "There's no better feeling and I've been there myself three times.

"He's had a bit of time away from the club, which I probably wouldn't have allowed if we had still been in a dogfight and needed three points. Dave will also come back into the squad and we will be looking at who starts the game after assessing Portsmouth's strengths and weaknesses.

"It's a good place to go for our final game because, as a player, you should want to play in front of big crowds even though there won't be as many of our fans there if we still needed a result and I understand that because it's an expensive day out."

Outlining his highlights in a season that saw him employed at Bootham Crescent a week after being relieved of his duties at Scunthorpe in mid-October with his predecessor Nigel Worthington having won just one of his final 17 fixtures in charge, Wilcox said: "It's been an interesting season for me, starting somewhere else and then coming into a difficult situation but there has been progress made that we can take into next season.

"There have been pivotal moments when we have won certain games. We've had some terrific away performances, which I want to bring to Bootham Crescent next season.

"We scored three goals or more on three or four occasions and Mansfield stands out in particular, having played with ten men for an hour and still won comfortably. But probably the overall highlight for me was Hartlepool at home because of the incredible magnitude of that game at the time.

"It was a six-pointer and there probably hadn't been a bigger one at this club for a long time. The manner in which we won 1-0 with ten men, though, showed there are positives to take forward at this football club."

Wilcox also pondered on the narrow margins between success and failure, highlighted by the team sharing the spoils in more than a third of their league fixtures.

"We've drawn 18 games and the club drew 17 to get to the play-offs last season," he pointed out. "If we had just won five of the games we have drawn at home, we would have had a successful campaign rather than one which wasn't so good."

Ryan Jarvis has not been included in the squad for tomorrow’s match having completed his loan spell with Conference club Aldershot.

The out-of-contract striker is now expected to be released by the Minstermen.