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‘No mercy’ - York City boss ignores all Darlington tales of woe

By Dave Flett

12:17pm Friday 27th January 2012

York City manager Gary Mills is telling his players to ignore all tales of woe concerning tomorrow’s Blue Square Bet Premier hosts Darlington.

The crisis club, whose future remains in the balance after only being saved from closure last week by a £50,000 cash injection, are yet to pick up a single point in 2012 and only had eight fit senior professionals for Tuesday’s 3-2 defeat at Hayes & Yeading United.

Six teenagers were fielded from the start of that midweek clash and caretaker manager Craig Liddle, now 40, has even re-registered as a player with the possibility that he could take the field against the Minstermen despite hanging up his boots seven years ago.

But Mills does not want any doom mongering to distract, or even, fool his team ahead of the Darlington Arena clash.

He said: “I don’t listen to anything like that. Darlington can say what they want – I’ve heard it all before and it can all be mind games.

“All I know is Fleetwood went there the other day and only won 1-0. It was a win but not as comprehensive as everybody thought it would be.

“They’ve since lost 3-2 at Hayes but Darlington will be using whatever tools they can to get an advantage ahead of this match. We won’t be approaching the game any differently than we did before we went to Kidderminster on Tuesday night.

“As hard as it might sound, I can’t have any interest in what problems Darlington have got and what they might not have. Of course, I don’t want to see Darlington do anything other than survive and carry on and on because I would never want to see a club of their history no longer around but I can’t do anything to help that.

“I’m going there with my football club to do a job and get three points. Then, at 5pm, I will wish them all the best for the future.”

City ruthlessly despatched another troubled club, Kettering, 7-0 last month but Mills added that he is neither expecting nor ruling out a repeat performance of that outcome.

He said: “Who knows what the score will be? We will be looking to win the game playing our style of football.

“The main thing is to come back with three points whether we win 1-0, 2-0 or 7-0.”

With a crowd of more than 5,000 turning up for last weekend’s defeat to Fleetwood, Darlington are expected to be supported by another big home gate, as the community rallies around its ailing club to provide greater gate receipts.

City fans can also play their part in that cause by turning out in their numbers, but Mills wants that to be the extent of the away support’s backing for their hosts.

“Our fans can play a big part for us tomorrow,” the City chief pointed out. “The support we’ve had at places like Lincoln and Mansfield recently and, when we went down to ten men at home to Ebbsfleet, has been absolutely fantastic.

“It’s an inspiration to the players so it would be great to get a couple of thousand of our fans there and, even though there’s talk of people from York going to support Darlington in their hour of need, I don’t want them going for any other reason than getting behind us and helping us to get three points. I’m here to get York City promoted and that’s all I’m interested in.”

The Minstermen will still be without midfielder Scott Brown at Darlington as he sits out the second of a three-game ban.

Andre Boucaud is expected to be preferred in the starting line-up to Adriano Moké, who made way for the Trinidad & Tobago international for the second half of Tuesday’s 1-1 draw at Kidderminster.

Mills said: “Adriano did okay but not that well otherwise I wouldn’t have brought him off. I felt I needed to change things at half-time.

“Even though I’d decided to go with him from the start, it didn’t go as I had wanted.

“He’s got so much ability it’s frightening and he’s made a massive impact in some games so he won’t be disregarded for the rest of the season because of 45 minutes but we know he can do better than he did.

“Andre got on the ball for us a bit more because we didn’t do that enough in the first half.”

Former Sligo Rovers forward Matthew Blinkhorn – another half-time replacement for Jamie Reed at Aggborough – could also make his full debut for the visitors with Mills adding: “Reedy looked a bit heavy-legged so I decided to bring him off as well and I thought we were better in the second half.

“Blinks put himself about. If I had to make the decisions I did on Tuesday again, I’d do the same.”

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