TEENAGE keeper Ryan Whitley looks set to retain his place in York City’s goal following his promising first-team debut during a 1-0 home win over Southport.

City chief Steve Watson revealed afterwards that it was always his intention to hand York-born Whitley his chance during the run-in to the end of the National League North campaign but, with five games still left to play, he decided to bring that decision forward with Adam Bartlett suffering from a sickness bug.

The match was the first of 71 senior contests that Bartlett has missed since signing for the Minstermen in November 2017 and, with both net-minders be out of contract at Bootham Crescent this summer, Watson has confirmed that Whitley’s first National League North outing will not be his last this month.

“Sticking Ryan in for one game and then pulling him straight back out won’t tell me as much as I need to know about him,” Watson pointed out. “I was always going to give him a chance before the end of the season anyway, and he’s been patient, as one of the only lads in the squad who I haven’t had a proper look at.

“The plan was probably to give him his debut a little bit later, but I thought he did virtually everything right and we’ll have to decide what’s best for the next game now this week. He’s certainly done his chances of staying in no harm and we’ll certainly see him again this season.

“He made good decisions for somebody of his age and took the pressure off by taking a couple of crosses. He also swept up well and his starting position was good, so he should be really pleased with his debut.

“He’s got the makings of a really good keeper, so it was important to give him a chance and he took it. I have to pick teams on what I see during the week in training but, if you’ve had a really good performance the game before, you’ve got a really good chance of staying in the side.”

Whitley was one of two debutants against Southport, with on-loan Barnsley defender Jasper Moon also starting in place of Joe Tait – another player stricken by illness.

On the 18-year-old Oakwell hopeful’s first professional contest, an impressed Watson added: “It’s very difficult to step up from under-23s football and I was concerned about the physical side of things, but he coped with that pretty well.

“There was a bit of a mix-up between him and Newts (Sean Newton) just before half-time but, other than that, he looked confident on the ball and found the striker with good composure. He has clearly been taught to play the right way, which I am all for, even though, like everybody else, he went a bit route one in the second half, which I’m not all for.

“We’ve brought him here to play and, with Joe Tait not feeling 100 per cent, it was an ideal chance to put him in the team.”

The City boss went on to declare himself pleased with the team’s first victory in five matches courtesy of Macaulay Langstaff’s 32nd-minute strike, but he was less happy with the standard of the second-half display.

“I was really pleased with three points after three straight draws and I was delighted to get a clean sheet for the teenagers,” Watson admitted. “But we have to play better than we did, because we didn’t play how I want to play, especially in the second half.

“We weren’t confident enough on the ball and I don’t know why. I was hoping at half-time that this was going to be the game we put somebody to the sword, but we made hard work of the second half.

“We wasted a number of chances again, with our final balls from wide areas poor and a couple of sitters missed. We have players who have so much more ability than they are showing, and I want them to show everybody what they can do. I don’t want them to be trying to get rid of the ball as soon as possible.”

Jake Wright was restored to the starting line up following his loan spell at Boston and employed in a number-10 role as City switched to a 4-2-3-1 formation with midfielder Adriano Moke serving a one-match suspension.

On that system change, Watson explained: “I just wanted to get Jake, Macaulay Langstaff and Alex Kempster on the ball as much as possible. We almost gave Jake a free role and he did some good things but, like everybody else in the second half, he didn’t look after the ball well enough.”

Langstaff, meanwhile, has netted four times in as four games since he returned from his loan spell at Bradford Park Avenue with Watson saying: “He’s got goals in his game at the moment, which is a good habit to get into. He took a couple of shots on when there were better options, but I’m not going to tell a striker not to shoot.”