ADAM HINSHELWOOD has backed his latest York City addition Marvin Armstrong to become a ‘fans favourite’ after an impressive debut on Saturday.

Armstrong starred in York’s 1-0 victory over Aldershot Town on Saturday after initially joining the club on Friday, with the midfielder producing a battling display as City rose to 21st in the Vanarama National League table.

It was a needed first win for Hinshelwood, after a tough start to life in North Yorkshire which included a 6-1 defeat to Altrincham last week.

But the City boss rallied at his side’s performance and explained his decision-making in selecting his team, as Hinshelwood made seven changes from the side that lost at Altrincham.

“I know Marvin and I know that he will get better from that, he gives you that energy,” Hinshelwood enthused.

“I looked at it the other day and just felt that we needed some legs and some energy in the middle of the park, and I knew that Marvin would give us that.

“He will be like that every single game with that energy, if he could finish a bit better like in the first-half there, then he probably wouldn’t be playing at this level.

“That’s for us to work on with him, but one thing you can guarantee from Marvin is that he will leave everything out there.

“He’ll be a fans favourite here.”

Hinshelwood also took the time to laud the performance of makeshift centre-back Ryan Fallowfield, who slotted into a different position with Will Smith absent due to a personal issue, and Adam Crookes and Tyler Cordner still recovering from knocks.

The York boss praised the partnership between Fallowfield and Callum Howe, and believes that he may have stumbled across a backline to build on after an important clean sheet and three points against Aldershot.

Hinshelwood explained: “Will Smith had a bit of a personal problem overnight, so he obviously wasn’t available to be selected.

“One or two things have happened in the background and we had to go with this team, but I thought Ryan was excellent at centre-back.

“We want to play out from the back and we wanted to switch the ball as you could see today (Saturday), he gives you that calmness playing there and he attacked the ball well.

“He had a really good partnership with Callum Howe, we might have stumbled across a nice partnership there at centre-back.

“I thought he was superb, he really gave us some calmness and he can pick a pass.

“There was one which happened here in the first-half in front of us and he was calm when playing it to Dan Batty.

“That can be the difference with a full-back playing there, we did it a lot at my previous team with a full-back playing centre-back and it seems to have worked well.

“Sometimes you stumble across good partnerships, and it seemed to have been a good one today.”