ARDLEY’S YORK ARE STILL LEFT WANTING

YORK City managed to hold a Dagenham & Redbridge side oozing in confidence after last weekend’s 7-1 drilling of Oxford City.

Jake Hessenthaler’s 11th minute opener put the Daggers in prime position to capitalise but York, eager to respond after their midweek 1-0 disappointment to Dorking Wanderers, levelled just before half-time through Ryan Fallowfield.

A point, though, wasn’t enough to ease the pressure on Neal Ardley and his men with the boss admitting his City side didn’t do enough to warrant three points.

“I don’t think we did enough to win it, that’s the truth,” Ardley admitted.

“We had a bad setback, someone’s lost their marker and we’re 1-0 down, we’re usually quite good at that because we do a lot of work on set plays so that was disappointing.

“We got caught on the counter-attack and they could have nicked a second so that could have been tough.

“I thought that to be 1-0 down at home after what happened on Tuesday, and for Dipo to have to come off which is a big threat for us, I thought that we responded quite well from that point.”

The Daggers started the brighter with last week’s hat-trick hero Josh Rees finding an early sight of goal but dragged his effort wide.

But it didn’t take long for the visitors to force their way ahead – Hessenthaler exposing York’s defensive frailties once again to arrive unmarked in the City box before arrowing a header past a helpless George Sykes-Kenworthy.

It could have been two just a minute later as the Daggers broke forward again when wide man Ryan Hill pulled the ball back into the path of Freddie Sears, who somehow dragged an effort wide from eight yards out.

Callum Howe made his presence known with a brilliant block on a strike by Sears before Adam Crookes saw his goalbound header from a responding corner courageously blocked on the line by a retreating Dagenham defender.

York were forced to take striker Dipo Akinyemi off with a back injury, but regrouped in his absence by drawing level thanks to a clinical finish from wing-back Fallowfield inside the area, poking Danny Amos’ impressive cross into the bottom left corner on the brink of halftime.

Action was pretty sparse in the second-half, with York’s Lenell John-Lewis scuffing a strike wide before Hill saw a powerful strike blocked from the edge of the area.

Nik Tavares thought he had found the winner when powering a header against the crossbar from another Dagenham corner, before York’s Will Smith saw a half-volley narrowly miss the target of Elliot Justham’s goal.

Sykes-Kenworthy was called into action to deny a stoppage-time free-kick from Josh Rees, before the referee brought a dull affair to a close.