YORK CITY fashioned their third straight draw against Championship opposition following a 0-0 stalemate with Leicester City at Bootham Crescent.

Nigel Worthington’s men failed to seriously test Conrad Logan in the Foxes’ net until the last minute but kept their shape well and passed the ball neatly to continue their unbeaten run during pre-season.

That the Minstermen were able to do so was largely thanks to ’keeper Michael Ingham, who produced a trio of inspired saves in the last ten minutes before the break.

Loan signing Ben Davies, who hooked up with his new Minstermen team-mates for the first time on Monday following his arrival from Preston North End, slotted straight in at left-back as Worthington also started the match with Sander Puri and skipper Chris Smith.

Kasper Schmeichel, Paul Konchesky and Sean St Ledger were among a slew of first- teamers who had played at Port Vale on Tuesday night, but Foxes boss Nigel Pearson still fielded the likes of former England striker David Nugent, Anthony Knockaert and Lloyd Dyer.

City got off to the brighter start.

Ryan Jarvis only narrowly failed to get his head on a swinging Puri cross from the right in the second minute before he flashed a shot wide of Logan’s right hand post from 16 yards barely 60 seconds later.

Gradually, though, Leicester started to make regular incursions into City territory.

Knockaert blasted over the bar on 17 minutes from Dyer’s inside pass and, soon after, Ingham parried away Nugent’s angled shot after good work from Chris Wood.

The Minstermen were then fortunate it was centre-half George Taft waiting in the centre of the area when Paul Gallagher’s cross came his way just after the mid-point of the first period.

City, though, were also creating their own half chances.

Ashley Chambers, the former Leicester winger who made his debut for his home town club aged just 15, smashed a shot across goal from an acute angle when he perhaps ought to have picked out one of his colleagues before Tom Platt skewed a flick past a post on 32 minutes.

But Leicester’s menace remained and only three outstanding saves from Ingham kept the two teams level at the break.

He tipped a fierce drive from Knockaert round his right post nine minutes before the interval and then somehow kept out a snap shot from Danny Drinkwater – smashed at him from close range.

The former Northern Ireland international also had to be alert when Drinkwater unleashed a fizzing firecracker from 30 yards, a shot hit so powerfully it momentarily stunned the City veteran.

Worthington initially refrained from making a raft of substitutions at the break – it was 53 minutes before Ryan Bowman arrived to replace Richard Cresswell – and, just after, Leicester should have at least tested Ingham when Drinkwater scuffed wide after being presented with a scoring opportunity 12 yards out.

The cavalry then arrived off the bench for the Minstermen as David McGurk, Michael Coulson and Chris Kettings were among six to enter the fray.

Woods’ goalbound toe-poke, on 67 minutes, was cleared away a yard out after he battled through a couple of tackles to fight for Nugent’s pass across the box and Kettings was equal to Knockaert’s shot, following a good one-two with Lloyd, with just over 15 minutes remaining.

At the other end, Chambers was just beaten by Logan to a wonderful cross from the left but Bowman, on only 20 minutes, went off with a cut following a clash of heads and first-year scholar Callum Rzonca was pressed into action as an additional substitute.

Chris Dickinson thought he might have stolen it for City in the last five minutes but his looping header, ruled offside anyway, drifted just past the far post and, from a similar position on the left side of the box, McGurk, from a Coulson corner, saw his header put behind.

York City: Ingham (Kettings, 56), Oyebanjo (Atkinson, 56) Smith (Allan, 56), Parslow (McGurk, 56), Davies (Fyfield, 59), Puri (Coulson, 56), Platt (Coates, 70), Clay, Chambers, Cresswell (Bowman, 53), Jarvis (Atkinson, 70).

Leicester City: Conrad Logan, Paul Gallagher, George Taft (Tom Hopper, 74), Liam Moore, Jeff Schlupp, Anthony Knockaert, Matty James, Danny Drinkwater, Lloyd Dyer, Chris Wood, David Nugent.

Attendance: 1,564 (283 from Leicester).