YORK City assistant manager credited the atmosphere of the club after a hard-fought 2-0 victory over Oxford City on Tuesday night.

Cox admitted that he felt the belief dwindle after the 3-1 defeat to Hartlepool United last Saturday, a performance which Neal Ardley described as 'embarrassing'.

But Cox felt the discussion between co-chairman Matt Uggla and the players was a factor that hugely improved the efforts of the players on Tuesday.

“The atmosphere around the place was good, the boys knew that they had let themselves down at the weekend with such a big crowd," Cox explained.

"They tried to change it and I think they did, the first half was excellent, they scored the goals and then in the second half we had a number of chances down the right-hand side.

"We sat in, had a game plan to counter-attack even though we was at home, and I thought we did that really well.

“We did lose a little bit of belief in ourselves, and the chairman was right, he came in and had a conversation with the boys and he spoke really, really well.

"The players took that on board and the work ethic on Tuesday was brilliant, it doesn’t matter who you are playing if you put the work in.

"Our professionalism of sitting in and playing on the counter-attack was excellent, because people didn’t think we would do that at home, but we created more chances than we have done all season really."

Cox also felt that Oxford being a part-time outfit could have contributed to City's performance, with York being able to handle midweek matches better.

“If you look at the stats, the stats prove that if you are part-time you can struggle in midweek.

"I think it was Woking maybe last year, they didn’t win 15 games on a Tuesday night because they were only part-time whenever that was.

"They were probably thinking that it was a good time to play us because they had just been beaten badly at home, but it was good for everybody really."