Wycombe v York City: Adam Hinshelwood on Minstermen's remarkable turnaround and the untapped potential

“There was a football camp on and there were one or two York City shirts being worn by the youngsters, which is nice to see, but still not as many as we’d like,” he says with a smile.

“That reminded me that there’s still a bit of a way to go, but we want to get there and if we can start generating that we could be onto something special here.”

After years in the doldrums, of fighting against relegation to the seventh tier and playing in a historic but out-dated home ground, York City are on the up again and fans are dreaming of the fourth tier and a return to the Football League.

Hinshelwood has steered the Minstermen to the top of the National League after 16 games.

Last Tuesday week, they played to a crowd of 6,000-plus fans at their modern LNER Stadium as they defeated Barnet 3-1 to climb above the Bees from third into second.

Four days later, 2,000-odd York fans celebrated two stoppage-time goals that turned a Yorkshire derby defeat at FC Halifax Town into a victory that took them to the top of the league.

“That’s what I came to York for,” says Hinshelwood, “to be a part of a big club.

“When you get that kind of following you know you’re on your way.”

York’s turnaround in fortunes has taken many by surprise, particularly given where they were when Hinshelwood succeeded Neal Ardley in February, with the Minstermen 20th, one place above the relegation zone. Doomed to another season battling the drop back down to National League North following yet another short-lived managerial stint, the first campaign under the ownership of Matt Uggla and 394 Sports Ltd was on the brink of being a catastrophic failure.

Former Brighton player Hinshelwood had made his name in managerial circles in two spells with Worthing, helping them up the pyramid to the promotion race in National League South.

“There were about five or six places in the pyramid between Worthing and York and everyone questioned whether it was the right move to make,” says Hinshelwood, whose entire career had been spent no further north than York’s FA Cup opponents today Wycombe.

“But I wanted to test myself in a full-time environment and to be working with a squad day to day is something I’ve worked hard towards and I’m really enjoying it.”

He didn’t get off to a good start, the move looking an ill-advised one for both parties. York lost their first two home games under him and then were thumped 6-1 by Altincham, a result Hinshelwood references twice in his pre-match press conference this week, a shiver running down his spine on both occasions.

That sobering moment would prove the turning point. They won four of their remaining seven games to climb to safety and have won 10 of their first 16 in the league this season, losing only once.

Without giving away trade secrets in how he has manufactured this about-turn, the modern-day pressing game he has employed has helped, as have some stellar contributions from players new and old, not least Lenell John-Lewis, who at 35 keeps stepping off the bench to score valuable goals.

The exacting standards he sets himself and his players will be a part of it.

“The expectations I set myself are so high, I want every game to be 4-0, I know that’s not going to happen,” says Hinshelwood, who has one son Jack in the Brighton first team and another making his way at Leeds.

“My wife says ‘never say to Adam you can’t win them all’ because he will tell you that you can, and I believe you can win them all. If after Altrincham you’d have said to me we’d be in this position 16 games into the next season then we would definitely have taken it.

“Still more that we can improve on, we’re not going to rest on our laurels and get complacent, we want to keep driving performance, keep driving standards.”

High-flying Wycombe, where he ended his playing career in his late 20s, are second in League One and represent a free-hit on FA Cup first-round day.

“We want to be competitive, we want to give a good account of ourselves,” he says. “The last thing you want when you’re on the back of three wins is a hammering in the cup.”

But it’s sustaining a promotion run that is the priority, not that Hinshelwood is accepting that’s what they’ve earned yet.

“We’ll talk about that mid-April if we’re in this position,” he says. “Three/four defeats in a row can quite easily happen at this level. We’ve been lucky to be on the right side of results recently.”

Long-time York City observers would argue they’ve earned a little luck and the chance to look ahead with optimism.

“You definitely feel that if you get it right in this city then the whole place can lift off and go together,” says Hinshelwood. “We’re starting to get there with that.”

One win, and one replica shirt at a time.