Jones strives for consistency despite Hatters triumph

The manager was not in the mood for celebrating despite his side picking up a first victory at Bootham Crescent since 2001, as he felt Hatters’ display was nowhere near one to be proud of.

Jones said: “We need that consistency in our performance. I’m not asking for anything elaborate, not asking for Barcelona style football, not asking for anything that’s not standard in a good football team.

“I watched Northampton play these the other night and you can see why they’re top of the league. They do things well, they work, they graft, they’re a settled team, he’s (Chris Wilder) had them for two and a half years, I understand that, but that’s the level we need to reach in terms of a performance.

“Then in stuff we do and structures we give them, we cause teams different problems, but we’ve got to be better than that.

“It’s hard to be too disappointed because you look at the league, we’ve won 3-2 and gone three points further in our tally.

“But if you look deeper at the performance, which I do, because I know if you get a consistency of performances, results you can have a dip, you can lose a game, but if your performance is consistent, over time you’ll get results.

“We won’t get a hell of a lot of results playing like that on a regular basis.”

Hatters’ defending was once more a bone of contention for the boss as an error from Stephen O’Donnell led to York’s first equaliser, before the offside trap was found wanting for the Minstermen’s second.

Jones continued: “We have to eradicate those things as it’s not the first time that silly things like that has happened and we just got punished.

“It just gives them a way in and will go down from us trying to play from the back, but there’s no pressure, no nothing. It’s easy, it’s the right thing to do except the back pass and those are the things we have to eradicate.

“When we sit on the bus or sit in the cold light of day and put that to bed, we got three points, so praise the lord for that. But I just want us to be better and we are better than what we showed defensively, we are better.”

It wasn’t just a first victory at York since 2001, but a first goal for the Hatters in that time too as Cameron McGeehan’s 52nd minute header ended a drought spanning well over 10 hours.

Jones added: “We’re ticking a lot of boxes, we won away at Mansfield for the first time and won at home. We’ve shown a lot of character, we did it the other day too when we were 1-0, pegged back, and came back to win the game.

“So we are doing that, making improvements, it’s just I want bigger ones. I want little steps, but I want to take them consistently and at times we took a backward step here.

“Records are there to be broken though, it’s a new tenure so there’s probably going to be lots of firsts in what’s happening.”