STRAIGHT-TALKING Terry Dolan admits stuttering York City have lost their early-season sheen.

But in the wake of Saturday's 1-0 defeat at home to Oxford the City chief is refusing to panic and has indicated he is not yet ready to wield the axe.

The reverse, City's second in succession, has seen the Minstermen slip to ninth in the Division Three table.

It also brought to an end their ten-match unbeaten home record while goal-shy City have now found the net just once in their last five outings.

City paid the price for squandering some gilt-edged opportunities to take the lead, most notably Jon Parkin shooting over when clear on goal ,then Peter Duffield seeing a first half penalty saved.

"I think in general we have just lost a little bit of spark at the moment," confessed Dolan.

"Unfortunately, we are playing with three strikers and they are all misfiring at the moment, to put it mildly.

"You can normally get away with one or two, but when all three are misfiring then there is always a chance you will lose games.

"We had two good chances in the first half and if you don't take them then you are always liable to get caught by the sucker punch and we did."

Dolan insisted City's disappointing long-ball tactics in the second half were not part of his game-plan.

"I asked the players after the game why they resorted to it because it played straight into their hands," explained the City chief.

"In the first half, although we weren't passing it as crisply as I would have liked at least we passed it and kept the ball.

"I felt we needed to move it just that bit more quicker and in the second half I expected us to do that.

"Unfortunately, we resorted to just knocking long-balls, which was annoying from my point of view."

Despite their failure to follow orders, Dolan, who gave Oxford's match-winner Gavin Gordon his Football League debut when manager at Hull City, looks willing to stick by the players for the time being at least.

He said: "The players that have played have got us the points we have got so far.

"It is as a team that we have lost that bit of spark.

"You don't have to be a rocket scientist to realise you have spells like this in a season.

"Let's hope ours started a couple of weeks ago and is now over,"

He added: "Three out of our next four games are now away games and long trips.

"In the past, we have come away with a good haul from our long trips away so let's hope we can get a bit of spark back during this week and get ready for Exeter.

"We are creating chances, which is a plus.

"But as a team in the last two or three games we haven't scored goals and just lacked that bit of bite in our play. That is something we will be working on this week.

"A couple of wins will put us back up there.

"The important thing is the good start that we've had means you can have a bit of a lull.

"The players have got to realise now that it is time to get back going in the right direction."

City suffered fresh injury woe on Saturday with defender Gary Hobson picking up a hamstring injury, although it is not yet known how serious the injury is.

Midfielder Stephen Brackstone missed his first game of the season after being ruled out at the 11th hour with a stomach bug.

Updated: 11:19 Monday, September 30, 2002