COLLECTIVE strength will cure York City’s last-gasp wobbles.

That was the verdict of striker Jake Hyde, one of two men still insisting to have bagged the Minstermen’s first home goal of term.

City’s close-season recruit from Barnet reckons he got the final decisive touch to the corner whipped in to the near post by winger Anthony Straker to put City 1-0 up against Northampton. Straker, meanwhile, believes his corner arrowed straight home to the delight of the David Longhurst stand faithful.

Both team-mates have been in to the Bootham Crescent offices to declare their claim to the goal, the first notched on City’s home turf this term. The eventual identity of the marksman will ultimately be decided by the dubious goals committee.

But while it is unclear who has opened City’s home account, the 24-year-old Hyde is in no doubt that the Minstermen’s malaise of conceding agonising late goals in their first three games of the campaign is a responsibility of all the team.

And he added it was up to the entire City ranks to collectively erase the problem that has cost four points and a maximum start to the season.

Said Hyde: “It’s a collective problem. While we have got to see games out and show that bit more concentration, it’s also up to us strikers to score more than one goal.

“You can’t expect your defence to hang on for the whole match when they’ve only got a single-goal lead to protect.

“The team needs to create more chances and the strikers need to take more of them. We need to be getting two and three goals up.

“We are working on things in training to bring in more goals. We’ve got to be more clinical and more ruthless.”

Hyde was City’s principal striking acquisition in the summer of rebuilding and he admitted to being crestfallen when a training ground injury less than 48 hours before the season started denied him his debut at Tranmere.

Also ruled out of the cup clash against Doncaster, Hyde was thoroughly relieved to get the nod to start against Northampton.

“When I got injured I was devastated,” recalled Hyde.

“We’d all gone through the pre-season programme and then to miss out was a big blow.

“I was so glad to play on Saturday when again I don’t think we ended up with what we deserved and that was a win like we could have had at Tranmere.”

Hyde is convinced City are not that far away from extracting full reward from performances that otherwise have pleased manager Nigel Worthington.

While he has yet to discover whether he is off the mark for the Minstermen, he said the most important issue now was a victory.

“We’ve got points on the board already. We know we should have more than two, but now we need to get that first win on the board. When we do that it will be a massive boost for the whole squad.”