NEAL ARDLEY attributed York City’s 2-0 victory over Gateshead to the togetherness of the team.

A goal at the beginning of each half for Will Davies and Dipo Akinyemi saw York defeat their North-East counter-parts in the second of back-to-back matches, with City securing an important three points on home turf.

Ardley put the result down to the togetherness of the team rather than tactics, and in particular singled out Ryan Fallowfield, who played an entire 90 minutes with a tight groin in order to help the rest of the squad out after illness struck the camp this week.

“We’ve had a lot of illness in the camp, there were a few missing today through illness and a few of the boys on the pitch too.

“Ryan Fallowfield sat out training yesterday because of a tight groin and he played the whole game with a tight groin.

“That for me is the bit where if I own this football club or I am a fan of this football club, that’s the things that I want to hear because there were people out there putting their bodies on the line whilst not feeling well, having tight groins throughout the 90 minutes.

“That’s what we needed to do, we needed to come together and do it.

“I don’t know if there are any other ways to play Gateshead, but you’ve got to look at your team, and if you’ve got a team that can do a high press all over the pitch then that’s maybe one way to stop them from doing what they are good at.

“I look at mine and I don’t think that suits us, so we had to look at a different way of doing it, and I knew that today would be different to Boxing Day.

“We needed a bit more quality with the ball and I think we showed it.”

Ardley also felt that Davies’ early goal for York was pivotal, and was pleased that his side were again able to take advantage early on in a game.

“It’s all very well me coming out here and saying that I had a game plan that did it, but if Gateshead had scored first then it could have gone out of the window and been very tough.

“I just knew that in both games we needed to score first, but our best way of scoring early first was to be solid without the ball.

“You have to be tactically switched on and physically have so much effort to stop them from having the chances, and we limited them to very little.”