GOALKEEPER Scott Flinders has insisted York City’s players must show they are prepared to fight for the club after the midweek debacle in Portsmouth.

Flinders was beaten six times without reply at Fratton Park with all of the goals coming after Jonathan Greening’s 45th-minute red card.

The 29-year-old net-minder was playing in front of City’s travelling army of 141 fans during that sorry second period and admitted the team must now repay their supporters’ loyalty at home to Accrington Stanley tomorrow.

“I felt for the fans massively,” Flinders said. “Things haven’t been going too well during the last few weeks and I’m more disappointed for them.

“They travelled all that way and the performance in the second half just wasn’t good enough, so we’ve got to give them something back now. We’ve got to really pull our socks up and show them we will fight for this football club.

“We’ve got to analyse what went wrong at Portsmouth and work on things for Accrington. We owe the fans a lot because they’ve stuck by us during the last few weeks.

“It will be another tough game but it will be about us all sticking together and putting on a real performance for them. Things are hard to take at the minute, but you’ve just got to move on in these situations.”

Flinders went on to confess that he was gobsmacked by a half of football that he declared was his busiest in more than a decade as a professional.

Along with being beaten Marc McNulty three times and Ben Davies, Ben Tollitt and Conor Chaplin, he kept the scoreline down with a string of saves and found that hard to understand for a club that prided themselves on the way they reacted to going a man down last term.

Delivering his verdict on the south-coast capitulation, the former Hartlepool shot-stopper said: “It’s hard to know where to start really. The sending off made it a really difficult game and we always knew they were going to be a good side anyway and that it would be a tough place to come.

“You could see that just by speaking to the players on the sidelines before the game like Gary Roberts, but we did well in the first half. Strakes (Anthony Straker) had a one-on-one chance going through but, as soon as they scored a goal, it was like the Alamo.

“You have to stick together when you’re down to ten men. In the past, York have won a lot of points after being put in that situation, especially last season, but I’m still gobsmacked by what happened after the sending off.

“I’ve probably never had a busier half. It was like attack v defence for 45 minutes.”

Should the Minstermen suffer an eighth straight defeat this weekend at Accrington then this group of players will equal a club record currently shared by Wilf McGuinness’ relegated second division side in 1976 and Tom Lockie’s 1963/64 team were forced to apply for re-election after finishing third-bottom of the Football League.

It is not an entry Flinders wants on his CV and, with the club having now dropped into the relegation zone, he suggested it will be an added incentive to pick up points.

“We don’t want to equal that record – not at all,” he pointed out. “It’s not nice losing week in, week out.

“It affects everything away from football too, so we’ve got to dig deep because that’s what we get paid to do.”