MATTY Dixon is happy for fellow midfielders Luke Summerfield and James Berrett to bomb on whilst he holds the fort for York City.

The attack-minded pair are City’s leading providers of assists this term with Summerfield laying on eight goals for team-mates and Berrett four.

Summerfield has also netted six times and Berrett five during the campaign and 21-year-old rookie Dixon, who is yet to hit the target or create a goal in six outings for the Minstermen, has no problem carrying out his duties in a deeper role.

It is a responsibility that Scot Bennett filled prior to being switched to his preferred position of centre back last weekend against Wycombe and Dixon admitted playing with the on-loan Notts County utility man is proving an education.

“Scotty has done very well since he came in,” he explained. “He has a lot of experience in the Football League and playing with people like him can only help me as a young lad.

“Hopefully, I can learn stuff from his game and put it into mine, because that can only benefit me in the future. I just sat in there against Wycombe, taking over Scotty’s role and thought I had a good performance.

“I gave Summers and Bezzer the ball to go forward and they were excellent, creating a couple of chances. Summers nearly got a couple of goals for himself as well.”

Dixon had not featured for the Minstermen in eight matches prior to his recall and confessed that it has been difficult watching the team plunge into deep relegation trouble from the bench.

“It was good to be back out there after not playing for five or six weeks,” he confessed. “I just want to play every game and, hopefully, I’ve done enough to stay in the team.

“Nobody likes being on the bench and it’s bad enough not playing but, when the team’s not winning or picking up points, it’s even harder. The mood is not exactly the best around the place at the moment, but we’ve got to pull together and see what we can do during the last few games.”

Having started the season in a Hull City squad challenging for promotion to the Premier League, Dixon remains philosophical about the likelihood of plying his trade in non-League football next season with 12 months left to run on his Bootham Crescent contract.

After a loan period with Gainsborough Trinity last term, though, he is under no illusion that National League football will be easy.

“Nobody wants a relegation on their CV,” he declared. “We all want to stay in the Football League but, if the worst comes to the worst, we’ve got to try and bounce back straight away.

“I played in the Conference North last season on loan from Hull so I guess the standard will be similar to that. There are also a lot of good teams in the division and it’s hard to get out of with only one team going up automatically.”

The former Tigers under-21 captain is also expecting a tough test at Hartlepool tomorrow, but believes the visitors have nothing to fear having shared the spoils with play-off hopefuls Wycombe and Leyton Orient on back-to-back weekends in displays he reckons should have been rewarded with maximum points.

“Since the new manager came in, Hartlepool have played really well, but we’ve got to go there and put in the same performances we have given in the last two games and, then, we can finally get that win,” Dixon declared. “Anybody watching Saturday’s game would have thought they were in the relegation zone and we were the team going for the play-offs.

“That was the same with Leyton Orient and, on our day, we can be as good as the teams at the top. It’s just frustrating that we keep throwing away our chances to take three points because we know we’ve got a big margin to make up and we’ve got to win every game to give ourselves the best possible chance.”

Dixon added that taking a more clinical approach in front of goal will probably hold the key to winning a first game in 12 matches.

“We were the best team by a long way in the first half last weekend,” he pointed out. “We missed a couple of chances and, if we had got that second goal, it would have killed them off.

“They came into it more during the second half, but didn’t really test Scotty (Flinders) at all before we lost concentration and they got their scrappy goal at the end. In the past two games, we have dropped four points and, if we had won them, it would be a different story now.”