YORK City boss Jackie McNamara has admitted his team now need a miracle to stay in the Football League.

The Minstermen’s 2-1 defeat at Hartlepool, coupled with Stevenage’s victory over Newport by the same margin, means McNamara’s side are now 11 points adrift of a place outside the relegation zone with four games left to play.

It means anything less than a win at home to promotion-chasing Portsmouth on Tuesday night will confirm City’s return to non-League football.

Should Stevenage get at least a point at home to Bristol Rovers and Newport beat visitors Oxford on the same night, though, even a win would not prevent the club from going down.

On the club’s desperate situation, McNamara said: “We need a miracle and it’s very difficult, especially when you give teams opportunities like we did again (at Hartlepool). We lost four points in the two games before and we’ve only got ourselves to blame by doing things wrongly.”

City were forced to play for two-thirds of the game with ten men following Dave Winfield’s first-half red card following a second bookable offence after the vice-captain slid into a challenge on opening goalscorer Nathan Thomas close to the corner flag.

McNamara argued the 28-year-old defender should have known better.

“The first booking was fair and the second one was silly,” the City boss lamented. “He’s gone to ground and that’s asked the referee a question.

“It was a mistake and he should have used his experience and not gone for the ball like that. If you do and you’re on a yellow card, you’ve got to get it.

“A tough game was then made even tougher with 60 minutes to go. I feel sorry for some of our players because they put so much effort in and came away with nothing.”

Vadaine Oliver was sacrificed following the 34th-minute dismissal and McNamara also launched into a scathing attack on the ex-Crewe striker.

“In the first half, we couldn’t hold the ball up and their centre back just kept coming through our centre forward, who also got the wrong side of their player for the first goal from a corner that wasn’t a great ball in,” the City boss fumed. “I thought we played better with ten men, because the ball was sticking more and that gave us a chance to play in the final third and attack.

“We couldn’t do that before and were getting pushed back. Everything was bouncing back from up there and that’s not for the first time this season.

“That’s why we changed certain things after the sending off and I was thinking about doing it at half-time anyway because, when your centre forward isn’t holding the ball up, fighting, contributing and giving everything he’s got, it makes it harder for the rest of the team.”

On-loan Newcastle United teenager Kyle Cameron levelled the scores on the stroke of half-time with his first senior goal but York-born midfielder Michael Woods went on to score the winning goal with McNamara adding: “It was a good time to get the goal and it gave us a lift, but the second goal came from a poor clearance and the cross should have been stopped by Femi (Ilesanmi), then their player got between our two centre halves.”