York City chief Terry Dolan chastised his defence for a lack of concentration after Plymouth Argyle brought the Minstermen's nine game unbeaten run to a halt at Bootham Crescent.

City looked well set to make it ten games undefeated after Mark Bower's goal on 34 minutes handed City a deserved lead.

But Argyle striker Micky Evans levelled deep into first-half stoppage time with the Pilgrims' first effort of note then grabbed a decisive second six minutes after the break.

Dolan admitted Plymouth's equaliser, more than two minutes into injury time, had knocked the stuffing out of City.

"If ever a goal changed a game then we saw it," said the City boss.

"From their point of view it came at the right time because it gave them a lift after we dominated the first half without creating as many chances as we might have done.

"In the second-half, we just weren't at the races and gave another bad goal away for the second one."

The City manager reasoned City had paid the ultimate price for some slack defending.

He said: "I had a little bit of a go at the defence last week and I said to them before the game if I was them I'd think, 'right I'll show you'.

"But the bottom line was we couldn't deal with Evans.

"It's okay saying we did it for 44 minutes but with people like Evans you cannot afford to drop your concentration and that's what we did.

"I keep saying there are two sides to the game.

"We might not have been at our best from an attacking point of view but we should have done better defensively.

"Evans got two goals, not through brilliant play but through bad defending."

The City manager was at a loss to explain City's poor second-half showing after an impressive first-half performance.

"In the second-half, for some reason - I don't know why - we looked very leggy and a yard off the pace," he mused.

"We didn't look like we were going to get back into it once they got the second goal."

While the defeat ended City's nine-match unbeaten run Dolan was quick to throw down a fresh gauntlet to his team.

"The run has finished now and we start again next Saturday at Shrewsbury," he said.

"Let's see if we can go between now and the end of the season on another run."

The defeat saw City drop one place in the table to 18th after Exeter's 2-0 victory lifted them above the Minstermen.

Fortunately for City, the Grecians were the only team involved in the relegation dogfight to pick up three points.

Barnet lost 2-1 at Scunthorpe while all the other relegation candidates had to settle for the sharing of spoils.

Bottom club Torquay, who have two games in hand on the Minstermen, drew 1-1 with Hull to narrow the gap between them and City to six points.

Updated: 09:25 Monday, April 02, 2001