NEAL ARDLEY is keen to protect his York City players after changing his team selection for the trip to Oxford City, due to a player struggling with personal issues.

Ardley had confirmed that his team selection wasn’t set to change from York’s postponed matches with Dorking Wanderers and AFC Fylde, with the City boss set on a starting eleven for the Minstermen’s trip to Oxford tonight (7.45pm).

However, a personal issue which arose for an unnamed City player has seen Ardley opt to make a change, with the boss happy to look after his players who may be struggling emotionally.

“In training today we had one of the players have a bit of bad news with their family,” Ardley explained.

“It’s personal reasons, and I could see today that he had to step out of training because it had got to him.

“From my point of view, and that was quite late in training, that person might need to be with his family tomorrow for a couple of days.

“Therefore we may need to make some late tweaks and working on the system.

“The empathetic side of me needs to do right by the person.

“Family is most important. I’ve been through it myself recently, and this player needs to be with his family.

“That’s the call I’ll probably make, so it’ll tweak slightly from what it was.”

Ardley confirmed that the rest of his side were in good spirits going into the Oxford game, with the City boss feeling as if his side is ‘getting stronger’.

“Everyone else is fine, they’re working hard.

“We’re trying to push Dan Batty and get him back into the throws a little bit. The injury list has started to come down.

“We’ve had a few more players go out on loan, a couple come back, and we feel like we’re getting stronger.

“Hopefully we can show that in our results.”