UNDERFIRE York City chief Terry Dolan is looking for his players to stand tall and win back fan fervour in the wake of the Minstermen's 1-3 defeat at home to Cheltenham.

The defeat, City's sixth on home soil this season, leaves the Minstermen in 20th place and just three points off the bottom of Division Three.

Angry supporters vented their frustration during the game and again at a post-match demonstration in the car park.

Dolan said: "The atmosphere at the moment means unless we get an early goal to get the crowd behind us we are not going to get much help from anybody.

"But the players have to realise that and we have to stick at it. We need a run to get going and get us away from the trouble we are in at the moment.

Dolan added: "There's no point in me giving a message to the fans.

"The only thing we can do as far as the fans are concerned is start the game well and get an early goal and get the fans behind us."

The result summed up City's inconsistency this season, following up a polished performance with a poor one.

The Minstermen didn't come close to matching their showing of just seven days earlier when they knocked Reading out of the FA Cup.

Basic mistakes also proved costly for two of Cheltenham's three goals.

"If you make defensive errors you are not going to win football games unless you score five or six at the other end," reasoned the City manager.

"There was no life in the game early on but after they took the lead we got back into it with Lee Bullock's goal.

"It was the first time we put four or five passes together and scored a great goal

"But then another basic mistake and it is 2-1.

"From then on, you have got to give credit to Cheltenham because I thought they played well.

He added: "I don't mind if the game is tight early on as long as we don't concede goals.

"We know as it goes on we can grind teams down but we are making silly mistakes and every one is being punished at the moment.

"We win a game or draw a game then we go and lose a game.

"It is so disappointing when you see how the players performed last Saturday, particularly Mike Basham and Chris Smith and Mark Maley, then we make glaring mistakes against Cheltenham.

"Confidence has been hit so much with the basic mistakes.

"You can talk about playing attractive football but if we keep giving goals away then its an uphill task.

"We will work hard during the week and hope we can get a result next week at Rochdale."

Defender Smith admitted City had let their standards of recent weeks drop.

"Everyone is entitled to their opinion and we will hold our hands up and admit we didn't play well," he said.

"But we know we are capable of better and we have shown that in the last four or five games, even at Darlington I thought we played well.

"We have just got to find a way of being consistent.

"We need to regroup in training this week. Rochdale is a big game and we need to look forward to that.

Updated: 09:11 Monday, December 17, 2001