RYAN Jarvis believes the lack of reserve-team fixtures is becoming a problem at York City.

The 28-year-old striker has been restricted to six minutes of first-team football in the last five weeks as he remains on the fringes of Nigel Worthington’s squad.

Jarvis has had a succession of injuries this year that have contributed to his lack of action and dropping down the pecking order at Bootham Crescent, but the Fakenham-born forward reckons his cause has not been helped by the absence of any second-string matches since the start of the season.

City do not belong to an official reserve league and, while behind-closed-doors contests have been organised in the past for any players with limited starting XI opportunities, no such games have taken place, as yet, during the current campaign.

It is a scenario that is proving troublesome, according to Jarvis, who reasoned: “I’ve only played a handful of games since I came back from injury in January and the only way you can get match fitness is by playing.

“That’s quite hard if I’m not in the first team and there’s no reserve side.

“People like myself, Monty (Lewis Montrose) and Dave (Winfield) haven’t played many games because of injury or team selection and we’re all short of match fitness.

“You need games to get that, not just extra training. We’ve probably got seven lads who aren’t getting 90 minutes, or even 30, every week.

“Not playing in match situations is a problem because, even if we could play 11v11 games with the youth team on a Tuesday or something, that would help and I would like that to happen.”

City boss Worthington has partly attributed Jarvis’ restricted outings to a fatigue condition that meant the former Norwich and Torquay attacker’s energy levels drop following 15 minutes on a football pitch.

While admitting he had undergone tests to get to the root of that problem, Jarvis is now satisfied that his struggles can be explained by a lack of match fitness.

“I’ve heard what the gaffer said about me, but I don’t think it’s as bad as he made out,” Jarvis countered. “I’ve had tests, but nothing serious came back and it’s nothing really.

“At the moment, I am just focussing on getting as fit as I can.

“I’m doing as much as I can after training and, on our days off, I have been running, rather than doing nothing, on Wednesdays and Sundays.

“It’s not match fitness, but you have to do something to get your fitness up, otherwise it will deteriorate.”

Jarvis also added that he feels a record of no goals in four of City’s last five matches should not reflect badly on current strike partners Wes Fletcher and Michael Coulson, pointing the finger at their lines of supply instead.

“I don’t think it’s a case of the strikers performing badly,” he argued.

“They aren’t getting many chances and I don’t think we are creating anything or playing good enough football in the attacking half.

“As a whole team and club, talking about all of us, I think we have got to look at how we go forward with the ball, rather than going from back to forward quite quickly, because I watched the game on Tuesday and it just looked like a battle for Wes and Couls during the whole 90 minutes.

“I sympathised with them because, if I had been playing, it wouldn’t have changed much, as I would still have been getting the same service.

“It’s not like we are creating a lot of chances and not scoring from them.”

Jarvis will be heartened to learn that City chief Worthington is in the throes of confirming a reserve fixture next week when the senior side are without a midweek match.

Explaining the recent absence of such fixtures, Worthington added: “We don’t carry a big squad, so you have to be careful you don’t over play.

“You don’t want to flood the youth team with too many matches either, but we are arranging a game for those senior players who haven’t been playing.

“They haven’t had a lot of game time but we are keeping them up to speed with their fitness at the same time.”