NEAL ARDLEY has spoken for the first time on his experience as York City manager.

Ardley, 52, initially joined York as the replacement for Mikey Morton in September 2023 with City rooted to the bottom of the Vanarama National League table after a winless start to the season.

The former boss had been vocal on the improvements that needed to be made for the Minstermen to survive in the fifth tier, taking charge of 34 matches whilst at the helm.

Of those 34 National League matches, Ardley managed 10 victories, 14 draws and 10 losses, with York escaping the relegation zone.

However, the club opted to part ways with Ardley with relegation still a real threat, with Adam Hinshelwood announced as his successor shortly after.

Speaking to the NL Full Time podcast, which can be found in full HERE, Ardley opened up on the difficulties he faced when in charge of City, as well as his thoughts on how the Minstermen have started this season.

Ardley explained: “I think you have to take each job as it comes, I don’t think you can go in and say that I won’t do that again, because different circumstances dictate what you do.

“At York, when I arrived they hadn’t won a game and were another team that were ten points adrift of safety and lacking confidence, with a squad of about 38 players.

“That was a very, very difficult thing to take on and we had to try and find our way around it.

“My initial way was to try and get the team to play the way I got Solihull [Moors] and Notts [County] playing, when we got to play-off finals, but quickly realised that both the make-up of the team wasn’t really suited to that.

“We were leaking goals left, right and centre, we only had two forwards in the squad, it was such an imbalance and didn’t have a very good culture at the time.

“We tried to work on the team spirit, tried to work on making ourselves competitive and hard to beat.

“During my time there, I think that I was 11th in the league with a team that were bottom.

“I got them out of the relegation zone by the time I left, so I felt that I was on track to do what my job was in the first year, which was to just keep us up.

“Unfortunately, the chairman wanted free-flowing, attacking football, which we were going to get to and was always the plan to get to.

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“It was how I played at Solihull and Notts, but I just felt that in that season I had to bury down the hatchets and keep us up, then go from there.

“The new manager has come in and wants to play that way, and has done it very, very well at the start of this season.”

Hinshelwood has enjoyed a superb start to his first full season in charge of York, with City occupying third position, level on points with top-of-the-table Barnet, with six clean sheets from their first ten matches and a run of being five unbeaten.

Ardley credited his successor for the impressive start to the season, and spoke on the impact of the York supporters, taking the time to praise their efforts and admitting that they deserved success after the trials and tribulations of last season.

“It didn’t start great when he went in. He wanted to play open and expansive football, and they were really up against it.

“It sort of clicked and off they went, fair play to him, he handled the pressure well and managed to get them over the line.

“To be fair, Tony McMahon, who was there when I was there, has now become their Director of Football and played a massive part in the Summer.

“We knew that the recruitment had not been great in the Summer before, there were too many players and the culture wasn’t great.

“Adam knew that as well, and Tony McMahon played a big part in clearing the decks, so to speak, in clearing out the players who weren’t going to help them get up the table and challenge like they are, and put together a smaller squad, a more select squad with more of the qualities that Adam wanted to play the way he has.

“I think they’ve had a really good Summer, and Adam has had the time on the field to implement it, so fair play.

“Another thing I will mention, the York City fans were great, always great.

“At the back end of last season when they were fighting against it and they had a bad run of games, they stayed with the team.

“They were unbelievable, the scenes at the end when they got their noses over the line and stayed up.

Neal Ardley spoke on his exit as York City manager.Neal Ardley spoke on his exit as York City manager. (Image: Tom Poole)

“The York City fans need to take a huge amount of credit, any pleasure that they are getting now from being at the top and from being one of the better teams, they thoroughly deserve.”

One York player that has stood out so far this season is centre-back Callum Howe, who was named as City’s man-of-the-match in Saturday’s 0-0 draw at Aldershot Town, having previously worked under Ardley at both Solihull Moors and the Minstermen.

Ardley hailed the impressive defensive efforts from York so far as well as the decision to name Howe as vice-captain.

“Callum is a quality guy as well, a really good guy.

“He, aerially, is one of the best in the league, he’s a good leader, I think they’ve made him captain and I had him as captain at Solihull.

“His positioning, he’s not lightning quick and he’s one of these that likes things in front of him, but they’ve got it right there at the moment.

“I think they have got the best defensive record in the league at the moment and have only conceded six goals, obviously Callum is a massive part of that and a real danger from set-pieces as well.”

Ardley finally spoke on where his future potentially lies, after his longest stint out of the game since becoming a professional footballer in 1991 with Wimbledon.

The ex-City manager hopes to retain the closeness with his family, having recently become a grandfather, but admitted that the right job had to be right for him after his experience with York.

“I knew then, with the timing of that [York exit], then there would be two windows of opportunity.

“One would have been the Summer, so three months later, and the next one would be October time when teams have assessed whether they feel as if they are going in the right direction.

“The Summer came and a couple of offers came my way, but nothing that was what I really wanted.

“I took the decision not to rush, and therefore I’ve now had to sit out for the rest.

“The good news is that I have managed to take in a lot of games, and I’ve managed to get my golf handicap down by four shots!

“It’s difficult, I’ve lived away from home for six years, in Nottingham, in Birmingham and in York, and I’m now a new granddad with a five-month-old granddaughter.

“It’s been nice to be around whilst she’s come into this world, so it would be lovely to be with your family more and be around them.

“It’s got to be the right job for me to be successful, I’ve spent six years at Wimbledon, two and a half at Notts, two at Solihull, so to only have six months at York was hard, because we’d done a lot of ground work to get to where we had.

“So to start again is tough, I think you look at the chairman, the chance you’re going to get to shape the team, to do it right and take it forward.

“They’re all the things you have to weigh up, or whether you’re going to be up against it from the word go.”