The Opposition View: York City

Last updated : 30 April 2015 By Jim Bonner

What is your assessment of York's season on the whole?

Job done ultimately, but pretty dismal nonetheless. Attending home games in particular has felt like a constant miserable challenge. Only sixteen goals and five wins tells its own story.

Regarding next season, I think most of us are realistic enough to know that, for a multitude of reasons, we will never have the resources to seriously compete at League Two level until we leave Bootham Crescent in 2016, so the basic aim is simply to stay up in the meantime as our play-off season in 2013/14 was an aberration rather than the norm.

22nd or better would be 'acceptable' next season, but the target should be to do as well as we can so that we can begin life in the new stadium with some momentum. There's something of a culture of negativity around the club at the moment and we need to massively improve home performances to reverse this. Not just the results, but the style of football, has been really turgid at times.

Who have been the top performers during York's campaign?

Up front Jake Hyde has impressed with his work-rate, awareness and ability to bring others into play and is also our top scorer with a respectable ten goals, despite taking a while to reach full fitness. A very underrated player who would easily get 15-20 goals a season in a good League Two side.

Keith Lowe at the back has been consistently solid and committed as ever and has chipped in with several important goals from set pieces, but hasn't quite hit the same levels of performances he did in our play-off season (he's far from the only one).

What are the biggest strengths and weaknesses of your team?

Our biggest strength as a team is our character. On numerous times this season we have managed to pull off results against the odds, either coming back from a losing position or grinding out results with ten men, especially away from home. This has ultimately been what has kept us up.

Our biggest weakness has been our tendency to shoot ourselves if the foot and drop points in ridiculous situations. We've conceded an absurd amount of late goals this season. I think somebody on our forum worked out that even if we'd just conceded an 'average' number of goals from the 85th minute onwards, we'd be well in the top half, which doesn't surprise me at all.

Nigel Worthington is one man linked with the vacant Pompey job. What are York fans' views of him?

I think overall Nigel Worthington did a good job here, but he's a divisive figure amongst supporters. On the one hand, he brought some much needed professionalism to the club when he arrived, both on and off the pitch, and we would almost certainly have suffered the ignominy of being the first newly promoted side ever to be relegated from the Football League without his input. Obviously, we also have him to thank for last season's superb effort.

On the other hand, his record in summer transfer windows has been a disaster. We got away with it in 2013/14 as he made some really good signings in January and took us on an unbelievable run, but our troubles this season are largely the result of his terrible pre-season recruitment. I think he's been granted less leeway by some of our supporters than other managers would have as his style of football is so attritional. Fans have a very low tolerance for unattractive football if it doesn't produce results.

What kind of match can we expect at Fratton Park on Saturday?

The usual boring pointless end of season stroll these fixtures always produce most likely.

Predict the outcome of the match.

Probably 0-0.