York City: 'Not a National League club', but getting back in the big time is a tough ask

The centre-back is only 21 years-old but he knows a thing or two about fallen giants.

He is on the books of Sunderland, who on Wednesday had the last Premier League unbeaten home record to fall, but when Johnson made his debut were still slumming it in League One.

Last season his journey took him to Notts County, the world's oldest professional football club and a top-division one when Neil Warnock managed them in the 1990s but now in the fourth tier having scrambled out of non-league three years ago.

This season has brought him to York, looking to do the same after being exiled in the National League for a decade, half of that time in the sixth-tier northern division.

Now they are 20 Conference games unbeaten with comfortably the division’s top-scorer in 27-goalOllie Pearce, playing in front of average home crowds of six-and-a-half thousand. That is more than 15 League Two clubs and three in League One but counts for little in the grand scheme of things.

"I always tell people this football club isn't a National League club," says Johnson proudly.

Sadly, though, it is, and despite their excellent form, there is no guarantee it will not be next season either.

The Conference is a tough league packed with clubs boasting Football League pedigree and sprinkled with high-profile managers like former Wales internationals Mark Hughes and Robbie Savage. Those gates only put York third in the division behind Southend United and Hughes’ Carlisle United and more importantly 21 wins and eight draws from 31 matches only puts them second in the table that really matters.

Rochdale, who dropped out of the 92 in 2023, are two points clear with two games in hand going into this weekend's games – York at Wealdstone, Dale at Yeovil.

Incredibly, since re-election was replaced by promotion and relegation in 1987 – when Warnock was at it again, leading Scarborough to the Conference title – no team promoted into the Football League has gone straight back down the next year.

"It's a great standard," comments Johnson. "I feel like it gets, not a bad rep, but maybe a player like me from Sunderland might look at going to the National League and think, 'Oh, it's non-league.'

"But when you actually come here and you realise the players that are playing here and the standard and the teams pushing to get promoted, it's a great league and it's a great place for a youngster to come and learn the trade and climb the ranks."

Despite that, the Conference only has one automatic promotion spot – something the Football League are considering changing – plus another to the winners of its six-team play-offs.

Last season York got 96 points – only bettered in league football by Leeds United, Burnley and Birmingham City. But Barnet got 102 and when York went into the play-offs having spent weeks biding their time in dead rubbers, they were undone by Oldham Athletic, two times FA Cup semi-finalists, one-time League Cup finalists in the 1990s.

Although he does not share it, Johnson thinks that bad experience can help this time.

"I think it'll be massive because in life if you've been in a situation before, I feel like you know how to handle it better the second time," he argues.

"It's probably amazing for us to go through that, go through them struggles, and the fans as well.

"They understand the sadness of not getting promoted and then they can be with us the whole way through and see us over the line."

Getting over the line would just be putting a club who have spent 79 of their 97 seasons in the Football League back where they should be in Johnson's eyes.

"I look at the facilities and I even look at the fanbase," he says. “A lot of the times when I play away, I almost feel like I'm playing at home because we bring so many fans.

"I always tell people this football club isn't a National League club, the same as when I was with Notts County, I don't believe that's a League Two club.

"These are big clubs and I feel like being in the National League is probably a disservice to our fans, to our players and our playing ability, because I look at the players that we've got and the pitch and the quality and I don't believe we should be in the National League. I feel like we should be higher and pushing on as a club.

"I definitely feel it's a great opportunity for us to go up this season."

A great one, perhaps, but far from an easy one.

"There's no room to slip up," he admits. "We've got to be professional in our performances. We've got to probably not look at other teams getting points and what the league is like.

"We've just got to take every game as it comes, tick them off, get the wins, and hopefully at the end of the season we're the ones that are the champions."

The ambition is brazen, the stakes are high, the thought of being the bridesmaid two years running hard to bear.