YORK City chairman Jason McGill has admitted he did his best to persuade Nigel Worthington to stay on as the club’s manager.

McGill was forced to accept the ex-Northern Ireland chief’s resignation with great regret and added that the board had not even considered the possibility of sacking Worthington despite a run of just one win from 17 matches – against ten-man Stevenage last month.

The Minstermen lost 3-1 at Newport at the weekend despite leading prior to captain Russell Penn’s red card on 46 minutes.

But McGill believes Worthington’s decision was not based on that one result alone and The Press understands doubts concerning his ability to reverse the team’s fortunes might have first manifest themselves following the 2-0 defeat at Dagenham a fortnight earlier.

On his efforts to change Worthington’s mind, McGill said: “I can confirm that I tried my best to persuade Nigel to stay. The board believed that he was the right person to turn the situation around and we have continued to be very supportive.

“We had not looked at the possibility of relieving him of his duties at all. We weren’t at that point and would not have considered it so early in the season.

“We were happy to explore ways of improving our league position, but I don’t believe it was a knee-jerk decision from Nigel. He sadly thought he couldn’t get any more from our current group of players and wanted to leave the club to give a new manager ample time to turn around the situation.”

Worthington’s biggest frustrations in recent weeks have been the players’ inability to translate their training ground promise on to the pitch on match days.

The board, meanwhile, broke the news to City’s players this morning with communications director Sophie Hicks saying: “We went to the training ground at 10am.

“Jason issued a rallying call to the players and asked them to support the next manager whoever that might be. The players were surprised and it was quite emotional because everybody, including the non-playing staff, had a very good relationship with Nigel and he was incredibly well-respected.

“He also leaves a legacy in terms of what he has done at the training ground.”

Worthington’s assistant Steve Torpey has been placed in temporary charge while the club begin the search for a new manager.

“We are hoping to get somebody in before the Shrewsbury game but, in the meantime, it will be business as usual with Steve taking charge of training,” Hicks added.