YORK City boss Steve Watson has revealed how he tweaked the Minstermen's attack to winning effect at Darlington on Saturday.

A hotly-contested National League North game at Blackwell Meadows, which saw a penalty and a contentious straight red for Darlington's Jake Cooper, ended in a 2-1 victory for City.

Clayton Donaldson may have taken the goalscoring plaudits with his match-winning brace, but the in-form Olly Dyson also played a key role on right.

"We pushed Dyse a little bit higher to nullify their left-back, who I thought attacked well when I watched him the other night," explained Watson.

"Dyse, I think, has hit a really good vein of form. He's been in the top one or two players every week. I thought he was excellent again, he allowed Clayton to swap sides and come in on his stronger foot.

"As it happened, all his chances seemed to fall on his left.

"That's a more natural side for Kurt (Willoughby) to play but we wanted to mix it up a little bit."

Despite City's dominance - particularly in the first half - and 12 efforts on goal, a good portion of which fell to Donaldson, it could have been a much more comfortable finish.

Fired-up by their second-half goal, Darlington pushed York to a jittery, bitty finish which City saw out by guarding the ball high up.

"I never want to be in a situation where you want to be putting the ball in the corner but it happens," Watson said.

"We've come off the back of another tough 90 minutes. It should be easier playing against 10 men but it never seems to be.

"We saw it out. We created a lot of chances. We saw an opportunity with a couple of minutes to go to kill the game off, not even let them in our half.

"We've got four straight wins. I'm not looking too deeply into what happened in the last couple of minutes."