OXFORD City manager Ross Jenkins was disappointed with the nature of his side's defending after suffering a 2-0 defeat to York City. 

Jenkins credited York and the defending of Tyler Cordner and Callum Howe in particular after the Minstermen claimed all three points, with Jenkins also praising the supporters of the home side. 

But the Oxford boss was frustrated with an underwhelming first-half performance, and felt his side could have grasped something from the match.

“I thought we made it difficult for ourselves, the two goals definitely," Jenkins told the Oxford City media team.

"If anyone let anyone have a run down the middle of the pitch and have a shot, then there’s a chance it could go in.

"That’s what happened, that needs to be better for us and the second goal was because of our defending, we need to be better.

"Overall we didn’t retain possession as well as we want, in the first-half we fell short.

"In the second-half we changed things, we changed personnel and shape and asked the boys to control things better.

"I thought they did, there are noisy fans here and we needed to control the fans here.

“York are a big club, they’ve got some really good players here, a good manager and a good set-up.

"We knew it was going to be difficult, but if you give away goals like that then it is always going to be difficult.

"It doesn’t matter what happened last game, this is the game we needed to concentrate on. We looked a little bit slow in the first-half, a bit too much respect, but in the second-half we dominated the ball, which is what I want to see.

“I thought they defended really well, their two centre-halves especially.

"There was moments where Ollie (Sanderson, Oxford striker) showed what he can do, he ran the whole length of the pitch and ran around everyone, and rinsed them for speed.

"But we didn’t do enough, there are strength and attributes to Ollie that we didn’t use.

“The fans coming to support us is brilliant, we appreciate that as well."

Jenkins also took time to apologise to the Oxford supporters, who had made the long journey up to the LNER Community Stadium.

"It’s a long journey for everyone, we just apologise for that first-half performance because it wasn’t us.

"I don’t accept that, the second-half was much better, now we move on.

“As much as they had counter-attacks, it wasn’t so much a dominant performance from them, it was just a little slow on our part.

"We created our own mistakes. There were moments where we really dominated the game, but the damage was done by those two goals, and we didn’t do as much as we’d like.

"It was two goals we could definitely prevent but York are a good team, we’re battling with big clubs in this league and we’re not going to get joy all the way through the season."