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York City: Boss Foyle stays cool on Wembley double dream
York City's day out at Wembley came like a bolt from the blue last term – an FA Trophy final the least likely occasion for a side scrapping for their Blue Square Premier lives.
This time, there are grounds for thinking that the Minstermen might be heading to London twice.
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However, York boss Martin Foyle is refusing to even contemplate one more day out at Wembley – despite the club's FA Trophy run and play-off push continuing to go from strength to strength.
City have already booked their place in the FA Trophy last eight where they will be favourites to book a semi-final berth by seeing off either Barrow or Gateshead, for all that they are drawn away.
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And only a vivid imagination can picture the Minstermen failing to make the Blue Square Premier play-offs, York holding a 10-point cushion back to sixth entering yesterday's fixtures.
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A nine league match winning streak from November to January has left everything rosy in the Minstermen's garden as the 09-10 season enters its last three months.
But Foyle will not allow himself to dream of promotion or another day out at Wembley, whether that be in league or cup.
"I'll let everybody else do the shouting," Foyle told Yorkshire Sport.
"I've been in the game long enough and if you shout Wembley or you shout promotion, you get your legs chopped off, don't you?
"I am just going to keep level headed, we'll do what we need to do and hopefully if we get some reward that will be great.
"Getting to Wembley last year was fantastic, it was very profitable for
the club but I just want some league points on the board before we can go and enjoy those games.
"We just need to keep that gap in the league and I wouldn't be surprised, with the number of away games that we've got, if the gap closes a little bit.
"We won't panic because we know we have got the fixtures – last season we needed points to stay out of trouble and this year it's to stay in
the play-offs."
The last two seasons have certainly been chalk and cheese for York – now rated only 5-2 shots to be promoted and general 5-1 third favourites to win the FA Trophy behind Stevenage and Oxford.
This time last year, City were among the favourites to go down.
However, Foyle is adamant there has been no quick fix, merely a stronger group of players and improved training facilities.
"There is no secret," said Foyle, whose team's ground went back to being called Bootham Crescent this week.
"People think we've dome something magical but there's no big difference, we were organised last year but without having that goalscoring touch and winning games.
"I think we're a little bit more adventurous, we are more organised and solid because we have got the players capable of doing the job that we want.
"Training has been sharper because the quality has been better and we've made the training pitch better.
"We've invested a little bit of money in that and it's all these things that the club needed.
"We've sorted the gym out and put artificial grass down. if you've got good training facilities then you have got a chance of making your players better.
"Last year it was a nightmare, we couldn't do anything."
This year there seems nothing that the Minstermen can't do and a trophy trail is very much alive on two fronts.
Foyle, though, can see the dangers of chasing two targets and admits that a fixture pile-up could loom.
He said: "the risk of a fixture pile-up does worry me.
"The last thing I want if we are going for the play-offs is playing Saturday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday a couple of times.
"You can lose personal and get injuries and once players get injured they can miss three or four games."
Worries perhaps, but for all Foyle's calls for caution and calm, the City boss admits that there is nothing wrong with dreaming of challenging Stevenage and Oxford at the top.
Asked about the season's overall target, Foyle replied: "It's plays-offs but if you asked me at the start of the season I would have said the top 10.
"We are looking at the play-offs, but there's still a chance of chasing Stevenage and Oxford – it's very close and they have got to play each other at the end of this month.
"We're just hopeful that something might just give to enable us to close that gap."
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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